


On Dreams and Their Side Effects

by Zangofel



Series: Damn Stubborn Dreamer [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Also Harts, Dorian Complains A Lot, F/M, Fade Dream(s), Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Iron Bull is an Excellent Friend, Present Tense, Solas gets a little sassy, Tamsin is better with her hands than her brain, The Fade, also why can't i stop anthropomorphizing animals, for like five seconds - Freeform, foresight, hurr hurr hurr, light dom, so many harts in this, very very light dom/sub flavors
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2017-03-22
Packaged: 2018-03-29 21:10:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3910810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zangofel/pseuds/Zangofel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tamsin Lavellan always wants answers. Sometimes she gets them in the Fade. Sometimes, she gets answers to questions she didn't want to ask.<br/>Solas is in the business of answering questions, except when he's not. But it's hard to leave inquiries, and inquisitors, unanswered. </p><p>(Iron Bull sometimes wishes he didn't see quite so much.)</p><p>**Undergoing a massive rewrite~~!**</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A familiar beginning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I originally wrote this story as a way of coping after going through a breakup of a "This sucks but it's what's best for us" nature.   
> Now going back almost two years later, I'm fairly embarrassed by it, and very keen on putting up something I'm actually proud of. 
> 
> For returning readers, a lot of this will be familiar, but the content will be richer and more about the relationship than the end.   
> For new readers, Hi! Welcome! I'll try to make you laugh. 
> 
> Note that throughout the beginning half of the story, I've pulled HEAVILY from the game script for various relationship milestones. I've noticed that a lot of Solavellan fan fiction has its own take on how the relationship develops, so hopefully it will be familiar and not tedious to go back to the source material. 
> 
> I'll shut up now. Enjoy!

Purple trees, orange mountains, a lake of silver fire.

This is the Fade.

Tamsin wanders, brushing her hands over tall blades of grass. They puff into dust at her touch, and then reform into moths that spin around her before vanishing.

She knows this is the Fade, is aware of it in her bones. She’s heard that all dreams are in the Fade, but this is very different. Her dreams usually have a… storyline, for lack of a better word: find the treasure, save the survivor, weather the failures that bite at her heels. But here… here she is alone, her sleeping mind is silent, and it gives her peace.

Tamsin wanders, and discovers that the tree’s leaves taste like fruit, the orange mountains are much farther away and much larger than they look, and the lake of silver fire tickles her skin. She can always see forms moving about her, ethereal, half-there forms that flicker in and out. Her fingers pass through them like a cloud, and Tamsin wonders suddenly if it’s rude to touch spirits without asking. Perhaps, if she concentrated, she could see them a little better, or touch them? Could she return? Tamsin wonders as she walks, marveling.

The morning light wakes her. Tamsin opens her eyes, gazing up at the wooden ceiling, and savors the last remnants of the tree’s leaf-fruit on her tongue. As soon as it fades, she is out of bed, putting on clothes and rebraiding her hair, and scrambling with as much dignity as she can muster to the courtyard outside apothecary.

Solas, dear predictable Solas, is there. He looks up at her approach, and smiles. “I felt you in the Fade,” he notes before she can say anything. “Your joy carried like a song. What did you dream?”

“The most wonderful things,” Tamsin says, and tells him of her silver lake and purple trees. Solas listens closely, and a strange expression comes over his face: an odd mix of scholarly interest and delight. He ponders her story for a time, and then starts to wonder aloud.

“Simply the fact that you knew you were in the Fade while you were dreaming is remarkable, particularly as a non-mage. These ideas—purple trees, silver lakes—are unusual. They must be coming from somewhere, but I can’t imagine where.”

“Unusual?” Tamsin asks. “How is it unusual? What do you see in the fade? Will you tell me?”

And so he does. He tells her of old legends relived and new dreamers born, and Tamsin sits spell-bound on the edge of the woodpile, one leg pulled up to her chest and her chin resting on her knee. Solas’ long-fingered hands trace graceful patterns in the air as he describes the soft swoop of a spirit’s movement, the reaching heights of old human fortresses. His full lips hold a smile at the very corner, one that spreads ever so slightly when questions bubble from Tamsin’s throat before she can stop them, and when she thanks him for his patience with an embarrassed blush, he waves off her concern. He tells her stories until Cassandra comes to ask Tamsin to a war council meeting.

“Lavellan,” Solas calls quietly, as Tamsin is leaving. She turns back to him. “I will be here, if you have more questions.” He meets her gaze, and his eyes are soft and kind—and perhaps a bit teasing. She smiles at him, nods, and leaves.

She realizes, as she follows Cassandra to the chantry, that the smile seems to have permanently affixed itself to her face.

Now that Tamsin knows what to look for, she often feels Solas’s presence at the edge of her dreams. It’s a strange feeling, an odd mix of warm and cold, like a fire’s heat cut by the chill of a winter breeze. She doesn’t always dream in the Fade, but when she does, she wakes with a kind of sharp glow on her skin, and a desperate need to speak with Solas.

This usually happens in Haven, and so she can run to him, scramble as elegantly as she possibly can to his side, bursting with questions. He tells her so much—about spirits, about his adventures in the Fade, about grand battles and episodes of history as seen through the eyes of a foot soldier, or a prince, or a scullery maid hiding in a corner. Her experiences are never as clear as his—the line between dreams and visions, she supposes—but something about them feels familiar in a way she can’t name.

Sometimes she dreams in the field, curled up in her bedroll. Solas always meets her gaze when she awakes, as if he can feel her excitement, her burning curiosity. They walk together at the head of the pack, those days, heads together and voices a constant murmur.

Solas is always calm and collected. He never seems to share her bubbling excitement, which Tamsin doesn’t really understand. How can he always have that placid expression on his face when Tamsin feels as though she’ll explode if she doesn’t tell him what she dreamed? Don’t his dreams bother him? Does he awake with his skin on fire? She doesn’t ever ask him these questions, though. They feel too personal. Instead she scrutinizes him as they talk, looking for any hint of new emotion: a curl at the corner of his mouth, a narrowing of his eyes, a particularly large gesture. But he is a closed book. She feels, sometimes, as if the flashes of emotion he shows her are a drop from a bucket that will flood them all if it is tipped.

And then she dismisses the thought, shaking her head at her own dramatic flair. 

Once, in the Fallow Mire, they spend an entire day fighting their way through hordes of undead to secure a foothold in the swampland, and when Tamsin finally falls into her bedroll at the end of the night, covered in mud and soaked to the bone, her visit to the Fade is dark and fitful. No more silver lakes and purple fruit; instead, she dreams of frustrated souls and desperate scrambling toward a salvation she cannot see.

Her mood is dark when she wakes. Her companions feel similarly; Dorian magics the mud from his clothing a few times, then gives up with a series of disgusted Tevinter curses, and Blackwall, always taciturn, is near stony. Only Solas seems less than completely distressed. Although, Tamsin realizes later that morning, he has been unusually subdued since they entered the Mire.

Tamsin doesn’t speak to Solas about her dreams. They forge grimly on, lighting Veilfire beacons and destroying their enemies, and no one speaks much. Tamsin knows Solas felt her dreams, though; he walks beside her, keeping an eye on her. She turns to meet his gaze, once, and he raises his eyebrows at her in a question. She stares impassively at him for a time, and then looks back at the swamp in front of them. Solas falls back, but she can feel his eyes on her throughout the day.

They return to their camp that night, which has been bolstered by a small squad of soldiers, a requisitions officer, and a medic. Tamsin could cry with relief when she sees the fire roaring away in the middle of a circle of tents.

“Bless you,” she whispers when a soldier hands her a steaming bowl of stew. He grins up at her.

“This damp’ll ruin yer bones if you let it, Inquisitor. A little stew’ll do the body good.”

It does. By the time she’s finished her second bowl, she feels warm for the first time in days. Her companions seem rejuvenated, too; Blackwall stretches out and begins cleaning his sword lovingly, and Dorian cracks a few jokes with their cook. Tamsin scoots close to the fire and watches it eat through the swamp wood, her mind on her dreams.

A movement in the corner of her eye. Tamsin looks up to see that Solas has settled himself on a split log next to her. He gazes into the fire, too, then turns and looks at her.

“You dreamt last night.”

“Yes.” Tamsin resists the urge to look away.

“You didn’t come to me.”

“No.” Now she does look back at the fire, her mood dampened by the memory of those dark dreams.

Solas is quiet for a time. “It’s the undead,” he finally says. “Their souls linger here, crying for relief. I can feel it, too; they whisper in my ears as we walk.”

Tamsin looks back at him. “You can hear them when you’re awake?” she asks. Solas nods. Tamsin immediately feels embarrassed for sulking so when he has been fighting the same encroaching despair all day. She bites her lip and looks down.

Solas’s shadow shifts as he leans a bit closer to her. “You have no reason to regret anything,” he says quietly. Goosebumps rise on Tamsin’s skin at his perception. “I am accustomed to the cries of these spirits, as disconcerting as their need is. I could feel the sharpness of your dreams, last night. It pulls at you more than it does me.”

“What do I do?” Tamsin asks quietly. “I don’t think I can take another night of this and still be able to fight in the morning.”

“Take a sleeping draught. Just a small one. Your tie to the Fade is weak as it is; the draught will dull your mind just enough, and you should sleep through the night.”

Tamsin nods. “Thank you.”

“Of course.” A moment, and then a hand settles on her shoulder, gentle and warm. Tamsin’s breath escapes her and she flushes, hoping he didn’t hear it. “It is no easy thing to visit the Fade the way you do, especially for a nonmage. You must be able to truly rest. I will keep watch over your dreams tonight.”

Tamsin looks up, but Solas is already halfway across the camp, his long legs carrying him to his tent. She watches him go. Dorian retires soon, as does Blackwall. Dreading her dreams, Tamsin stays until the fire is too small to warm her, and then does as Solas recommends and takes a sleeping draught before she goes to bed.

She dreams of nothing at all, and wakes peacefully, the imprint of a long-fingered hand warm on her shoulder.


	2. Skyhold and a kiss

Time passes. Tamsin sips sleeping potions for the few weeks after the Fallow Mire, trying to shake off the last of the souls that followed her back to Haven, and throws herself into the Inquisition with wild abandon. With new resources, new weapons, and the strength of Tamsin's power at their side, they close the Breach, and then Tamsin's world comes crashing down.

She will relive it every time she closes her eyes. Corypheus's distorted face, shredded by the red lyrium, his horrific mix of fury and power, her desperation. Then the cold, so much cold, a wind that bit through to her bones until she felt as if she were made of ice, and over it all, a driving need to forge on, to try and find her people, to preserve the only safe place she has left.

Sleep eludes her the night after she is found. Her advisors bicker on, their voices gentler but their problems no closer to being solved.  Solas’s revelations about the orb plant a seed of frigid worry deep in her chest, to match the deadly cold air swirling through their makeshift camp, and the burning light of red lyrium and fire hides behind her eyelids.

Eventually, clucking with sympathy, Mother Giselle recruits one of the healers to cobble together a sedative. It’s not quite a sleeping draught, but it works well. Too well. Tamsin wakes two days later, sore and limping, but able to move.

There is, in the deepest parts of her mind, a whisper she can’t quite hear. It’s persistent, like a breath on the back of her neck, turning her gaze west. It settles only when they move, following Solas’ guidance, and Tamsin doesn’t notice when she starts to lead the trek. All she knows is that something is calling her to the mountains, up into the cold thin air towards a place that promises safety.

Every night, as soon as they make camp and her head hits the pillow, she falls fast asleep and does not dream.

Shortly after they reach Skyhold, Tamsin tracks Solas down.

“I haven’t visited the Fade since the Fallow Mire,” she says quietly. Solas looks up from his papers; he has claimed a study, of sorts, on the bottom floor of a many-storied rotunda, and by the time Tamsin has a moment to spare, he has already found himself a desk and chair, a bench, papers and books from the wonderfully undamaged library, and--somehow--paints. There is already a shadow of a shape on the rotunda wall. Tamsin takes all this in in a moment, then focuses on the mage himself. Her dreamless nights are bothering her. She wants answers.

Solas leans forward, resting his elbows on his desk and steepling his fingers under his chin. “Interesting. And you feel this is… unsettling?”

“Shouldn’t I?” Tamsin frowns. “I dreamed in the Fade off and on for months, and suddenly it’s just _gone_.”

“I see.” Solas studies her for a moment, gaze intent and unreadable. Tamsin flushes under his scrutiny. “I’m not terribly surprised, to be frank. It’s remarkable that you dreamed in the Fade at all. The sleeping draughts I recommended could affect you for a week or more, if you are not used to them. Even the residuals can affect sensitive dreamers strongly.”

“Do you take them?”

“No. If I am cut off from the Fade, it is… unpleasant. I feel as though a large part of me is missing.”

“You are that linked to the Fade?”

“It’s not a link, per se,” he says quietly. “It is as though I am a part of the Fade, and it of me.”

“How does that work?” Tamsin asks, her frustration briefly squashed by curiosity. Solas’s lips flicker at the familiar surge of interest. “You’ve told me so much about what you’ve seen, but not what it’s _like_ for you. Will you share that with me?”

Solas cocks his head at her. “Alright,” he says, “But not here. Let us go somewhere else.”

The snow of Haven crunches under her feet. “Why here?” Tamsin asks, looking up at the chantry.

“Haven is familiar,” Solas replies, his rich voice warming the cold air around them. “It will always be important to you.”

Tamsin frowns at his back. “That’s nothing new.” Solas glances at her over his shoulder, but only smiles his strange half-smile and continues on.

He leads Tamsin to the cell under the chantry and kneels by the iron shackle set into the stone floor. “I sat beside you while you slept,” he says, and his voice is heavy with meaning Tamsin can’t fathom. “Studying the anchor.”

“How long could that have taken?” she asks wryly. “With your wealth of knowledge? It’s only a mark on my hand.”

“A magical mark of unknown origin, tied to a Breach in the Veil?” Solas turns to her, and his crooked smile is wider now. Tamsin’s pretty sure he’s not making fun of her. “Longer than you might think. I ran every test I could imagine, and searched the Fade. Yet, I found nothing.” His eyebrows furrow in brief frustration, then clear as he smiles again. “Cassandra threatened to have me executed as an apostate if I didn’t produce results.”

Tamsin smiles a crooked smile to match his. “Dear Cassandra. If it doesn’t work, hit it.”

Solas laughs. “Yes.”

Outside the Chantry, his smile is gone. He’s contemplative, instead, watching the ground as they walk. “You were never going to wake up. How could you, a mortal sent physically through the Fade? I was frustrated, frightened.”

“Frightened?” Tamsin asks. Solas stops and turns to her.

“Yes. The spirits I would have consulted had been driven away by the Breach. I wished to help, but I had no faith in Cassandra, or her in me. I was ready to flee.”

“Where to?” Tamsin frowns at him. “The Breach threatens everywhere. Where would be safe?”

“True,” he acknowledges. “I was going to go someplace far away, where I could research how to stop the Breach before it reached me.” He sees Tamsin’s raised eyebrow, and his crooked smile returns. “I never said it was a good plan.”

Solas turns and looks up. Tamsin follows his gaze to the sky and the great green blemish of the Breach in the sky. “I told myself, one more attempt to seal the rifts. I tried, and failed. No ordinary magic would affect them.” His hand twitches, as if remembering that effort to reach out to the sky. “I watched the rifts expand and grow. Resigned myself to flee. And then…”

 _And then,_ Tamsin thinks, and can see that first closure, when Solas grabbed her hand and pushed it towards the rift. The energy coursing through her body, electrifying, exhausting, ripping a part of her away and filling her with a sense of completion at the same time.

“It seems you hold the key to our salvation.” Solas turns back to her, and she pushes the vivid memory away. She makes a face at his wording, and he smiles again, amends his words to something less dramatic. “You had sealed it with only a gesture.” He tilts his head at her, smile sobering slightly, and he says, a bit more quietly, “Right then, I felt the whole world change.”

“Felt the whole world change?” Tamsin echoes.

“A figure of speech.”

“I’m aware of the metaphor,” she replies, teasing him slightly for talking down to her. “It seems a little dramatic for you, though.”

“You change…” Solas stops, considering her. Tamsin steps closer to him, acutely aware of the distance between them. He tilts his head towards her. “You change everything.”

“Sweet talker,” Tamsin teases. Solas smiles crookedly and looks away. Tamsin follows his gaze, looking to the Breach in the sky and the mountain beneath it. Everything is clear and crisp, and it makes _sense_ , somehow… and, yet, even though there are no questions to ask, she wants to come up with something just to keep him talking.

She inhales sharply, a revelation crashing over like a breaking wave. _It isn’t the Fade_ , she realizes. She should know herself better than that. _I am such a fool._ Her fascination with his stories, the excitement in her throat every time he speaks, the warmth of his gaze… She’s interested in the Fade, of course—what rogue wouldn’t be intrigued and confused by the sudden appearance of a magical ability?—but it’s not his knowledge that she’s drawn to. It’s _him._

Her head and heart are full of that realization, and before she can think, she reaches up, turns his face toward her, and presses her lips to his.

Solas is surprised, frozen, and the heat in Tamsin is replaced by doubt. She pulls away. He looks down at her, eyes wide, his half-smile frozen on his lips. Tamsin’s stomach drops through the earth below her. _I’m an idiot,_ she thinks, turning away—and then Solas catches her arm, pulls her back around, and kisses her.

She gasps softly, startled, and  then _melt_ _s_ against him. He pulls her in, his lips tender, the strength of the hand on the small of her back a counterpoint to the sweet curl of his mouth against hers. They break apart for a moment, just enough to meet each others’ eyes, and Tamsin knows she is pink from hairline to collar.

Solas smiles, something fond and mischievous in his gaze. Tamsin narrows her eyes at him suspiciously, before getting distracted by the sight of his lips. _They are as soft as they look_ , she thinks absently, and leans up to kiss him again. Her arms slip around his neck, keeping her balance, and he tightens his hold on the small of her back. There is something fierce and trembling just under the surface of the kiss, something he’s holding back, and the instigator in her wants nothing more than to coax it out. Tamsin nips his bottom lip.

Solas pulls back, looking at her in surprise. She blinks at him, feigning innocence, and he shakes his head. She thinks he’ll stop, wonders again if she pushed too far—then he leans down to kiss her again. It’s still sweet, still gentle, but when she nips his lip a little harder, he huffs a laugh into the space between their mouths, grazes his teeth across her bottom lip. He tastes like citrus and summer storms. Tamsin rises up onto her tiptoes, trying to close the space between them, is rewarded by his other hand grasping her hip and pulling her close as she parts her lips to his—and then Solas pulls away sharply, shaking his head. Tamsin stumbles forward, startled. Solas reaches out to keep her from falling even as he takes a step back, and then another.

“We shouldn’t,” he says. “It isn’t right. Not even here.”

Tamsin wraps her arms around herself, suddenly cold. She is painfully aware of the space he used to fill. “What? ‘Even here’?”

Solas blinks at her, and there is a smile in his voice when he says, “Where do you think we are?”

Tamsin looks around them, at the snow falling gently from a sunny sky, the empty village. “This isn’t real,” she whispers.

“That’s a matter of debate,” Solas demurs. “Probably best discussed after you _wake up_.”

Tamsin sits bolt upright. She is in her bed, in Skyhold, and the sky outside her windows is just beginning to lighten.

_What the hell?_

They were in Haven, she realizes, but it wasn’t Haven. It was the Fade.

 _That’s one way to go back,_ she thinks. Her body aches with the memory of Solas pressed against her, and she’s breathing hard. She presses a hand to her lips and falls backwards into her pillows, dazed. _Well._

The realization from her dream remains, simmering under her skin. She likes him. She _real_ _ly_ likes him, and the inexorable pull under her skin day after day suddenly makes a great deal more sense

When her breathing settles and she no longer feels like half a person, Tamsin goes in search of Solas. He is leaning over his desk, scrutinizing a book; as she approaches, he looks up, and smiles crookedly.

“Sleep well?”

“I…think so?” Tamsin manages. Her stomach flutters at the sight of his smile. “It’s one way to start dreaming in the Fade again.”

Solas chuckles. He raises one hand, as if to reach for her, then lets it drop back down to his side. “I apologize,” he says. “The kiss was… impulsive. And ill-considered. I should not have encouraged it.”

Tamsin wonders if it is possible to go pale and bright red at the same time. Her stomach drops, and the blood in her ears roars with embarrassment. “You say that,” she manages, finding her voice, “but you’re the one who started with tongue.”

“I-I did no such thing.” Now Solas is blushing, too. Tamsin feels abit better.

“Oh? Does it not count if it’s only Fade tongue?”

“It has been a long time,” he sputters defensively. “And things have always been… easier, for me, in the Fade.” His voice drops. “I am not certain this is the best idea. It could lead to trouble.”

“We’re already in plenty of trouble,” Tamsin replies, full of the memory of the kiss. “I’m willing to risk a little more. If you are.”

“I… may be. Yes. If I could take a little time to think. There are… considerations.”

“Take all the time you need,” Tamsin offers. She doesn’t really want him to, truth be told—she’d like him to make a decision _now,_ because she wants to know if his lips taste the same in real life as they do in the Fade—but she can see the conflict and confusion in his eyes.

“Thank you,” Solas replies quietly. “I am not often thrown by things that happen in dreams, but I… I am reasonably certain we are awake now, and if you wish to discuss anything, I would enjoy talking. It seems, as well, that your inability to dream has resolved itself."

His voice is heavy on the last phrase with something Tamsin can’t read, but the roughness sends a jolt through her body. She bites her lip unconsciously, and while she almost immediately releases it, she sees Solas’ eyes dart to her mouth, sees the sharp intake of breath. She could stay. She should stay. Oh, she wants to be near him. And so she stays, and asks him anything she can think of—why Haven? Was it her doing? His? Should there have been people there? Why did it look normal, since her strongest memories are of Corypheus’s devastation? She leans on his desk, as always, and he stands a pace from her, as always, but the air between them is charged; she is acutely aware of the rise and fall of his voice, the soft gestures of his hands, wishing every time he moves that the gesture will end on her, that he will pull her to him again. His head is leaned closer to her, his voice soft, as he tells her of a wisdom spirit he met in the Fade.

The door to the rotunda slams. Tamsin and Solas look up. Cullen is walking through the rotunda, a cringing expression on his face from the sound of the door.

“I’m sorry for interrupting,” he says, striding across the room.

“Not at all, Commander,” Solas says. Cullen glances back at them apologetically before he exits the room, and Tamsin wonders what this looks like to anyone who knows them. Can they tell? They must be able to tell. There has not been a single moment in the last hour where she has not been acutely, fiercely aware of Solas’s body so close to hers.

But he has asked for space, and time, and so she gives it. Her brain seems determined to make up for her months of blindness, and she has to keep her eyes from fixating on his lips, his hands, his arms, the way his calves flex when he walks or his fingers flourish as he speaks. She manages to pay attention to his words, which she privately considers to be no small feat, and when she finally leaves the rotunda several hours later, she is uncomfortably flustered.

  _It’s been a long time,_ she realizes. She hasn’t taken a lover in almost two years, and even that was a rushed and quiet moment, a tumble under the trees after along hunt that left their blood hot and their mouths tasting of victory. The last time she slept with someone she truly cared for was nearly five years ago. _Before Enara’s death_ , she realizes, and rather than sorrow, the realization puts a smile on her face. _If you could see me now, sister_ , she thinks, pressing a hand to her lips. They are tingling with the memory and want of Solas’s combined. _You would laugh at me and counsel patience_.

And so she is patient. Her eyes wander and her heart pounds, but she keeps her hands and thoughts to herself. She keeps her distance, holds the memory of the kiss close, and lets the matter be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tamsin is internally screaming. I couldn't figure out how to work that in gracefully. But she is.


	3. Some Mages are Dicks

Solas is confusing her.

Tamsin ponders as she rests her forearms on her balcony’s railing, looking out on the Inquisition’s growing fortress. They have been here in Skyhold near two months, now, and as their population has grown, so has the quartermaster’s resources and the builders’ workers. The shattered stone spread across the wall walkways is gone, and the scaffolding under one of the bridges from keep to wall is coming down. Someone has found the surgeon a building and cleaned it to her exacting parameters, and so the ring of sick and wounded in the lower courtyard has been replaced by the less-sick and less-wounded. They look less like squatters in a broken home, and more like a fortress now. Tamsin is—dare she admit it?—proud.

So much has changed. Even her companions—though all for the better, thankfully. They haven’t left Skyhold much these past months, but when they do, they move and fight in better sync than before. _Pain is a song everyone knows how to sing_ , Cole said sadly once, in one of his less enigmatic moments. Tamsin doesn’t  like to dwell on the implications of that too much, but it seems to be very true.

She talks with them more easily, too. Vivienne actually engages with her on the subject of mages, instead of fixing her with that frozen stare of disdain she has. Cassandra spars with her with less restraint—which Tamsin considers both a sign of friendship and a professional compliment—and Sera has started to hit on her _hard_. Tamsin’s pretty sure that’s a good thing. It’s entertaining, at least, and she has no room to complain given the unabashed flirting between her and Dorian. She’s not stupid, despite what some seem to think; one night, fresh back from a mission and thoroughly sauced, Bull had said to her, “You know you’ve got the wrong parts for him, right?”

“I know,” she’d replied, taking another gulp of ale. “He’s all yours when you want him, big guy. Try not to break him.” It had been a shot in the dark, driven by the strange instincts that seemed to speak up only when she was drunk or tired, but it had made Bull choke on his alcohol and the Chargers roar with laughter. They’d bought her another drink, and then another. The healer had sighed with disapproval when Tamsin begged her for a discreet hangover cure the next morning, and Varric let her pass by with her aching head with only a suggestive wink. Blackwall found her in the stable later, currying her hart and avoiding the chaotic noise of the keep. He handed her a skin of water with a sympathetic wince and left her alone. That, too, seems to be the pattern they’re falling into, and Tamsin is ever grateful for the kindness her companions show her.

Cole hovers around her, sometimes; he has an uncanny ability to find her when she wakes from a dream in the Fade. He never enters her room, but she’ll see him in the corner of her eye as she heads to the rotunda. Once, perplexed and a little annoyed by his constant presence, she stops and turns to him. “What?” she asks. Cole tilts his head at her.

“You have a hundred thousand shadows,” he intones softly. “They’re all you, but they breathe and sing differently. You’re the only one who knows, but you don’t know, not really.”

Tamsin inhales through her nose, forcing herself not to snap. She needs tea. But she knows Cole is a skittish halla of a creature; a single sharp word can undo weeks of patience and gentle voices. “What do you mean?” she asks carefully.

“They’re all singing the same chorus, but the verses are all different. Melody stretches across time and space and blood. Inquisitor. Inquisitor Inquisitor Inquisitor…” He mumbles the title under his breath over and over again. Tamsin studies him for a moment, then continues on. He’ll find her again if the message sticks, and she needs the tea Solas always has and never drinks.

She has a suspicion that he orders it _for_ her, now, because after the first week or so of her noticing he wasn’t drinking it, requesting a sip, and then unintentionally downing the entire mug, the tea on Solas’s desk in the morning began to change. Two weeks pass, and then Tamsin realizes that the tea is  now embrium with lavender, honey, and milk: her favorite. Tamsin sips at the mug, then frowns, confused. Solas stops talking.

“Is something wrong?” he asks.

“This tea.” Tamsin stares at it for a moment, then turns and looks at him. “You.”

“Me?” Solas asks.

Tamsin studies him. How does he know? Solas raises an eyebrow under her scrutiny, and the longer she stares, the more… not uncomfortable, but disquieted he looks.

Finally, Tamsin puts it together.

“You were watching me every morning I stole your tea,” she realizes aloud. “And you gauged my reaction to figure out what I do and don’t like. Based on… what, how fast I drank it? My facial expressions?”

Solas’s face clears. After a moment, he nods, and there is something almost like a blush on his cheeks.

 _Creators_ , Tamsin thinks, suddenly breathless. _I want to kiss this man._

Instead, she turns back to her mug, inhaling deeply, and takes another sip. She hums softly with her bliss, and catches the smile on Solas’ face in the corner of her eye.

Oh, she wanted to kiss him then, and all the days since… and she still hasn’t.

Tamsin sighs and drops her head to the balustrade, thunking it gently against the stone. Solas. Every time she thinks of him, a flush spreads through her body, and she prays it doesn’t show in her face. Their kiss—their one kiss—faded from her lips a long while ago, and she wants to recreate it _so_ badly. But Solas had said he needed time, and so she gives him time. She yearns to demand an answer from him. Sometimes, she finds herself daydreaming of them both stealing away, over Skyhold’s bridge into snowy woods, and seeing where their kisses would take them… but no.

And every time she sees him, he is as he has always been, calm, composed, full of knowledge she can’t even fathom and always willing to share. She has taken to spending more time with him, though much of it is quiet coexistence. She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t hoping he would do something—the first part of being swept off one’s feet is being in the same room as the one doing the sweeping—but she also finds genuine peace in his presence. His everpresent calm is infuriating if she’s desperately yearning for him to do something not-calm, but when she’s in need of a quiet place to be and a stable companion who is happy to let her ponder problems or read old histories or simply lose herself in some absurd romance novel Dorian dragged out of a chest for a laugh, then it is wonderful.

Tamsin stands and stretches, rubbing the kinks out of her neck with a grimace. She has too much to do to be sitting here, moping about the mysterious Elven enigma who does unbearably kind things for her but won’t bloody touch her. The resource-gathering parties are back from the Hinterlands, the Storm Coast and the Fallow Mire, for one. She needs to see what they have brought, talk with the requisitions officer in the rotunda, and someone had said something yesterday about Mother Giselle wanting to speak with her…

* * *

 

“Twelve bunches of elfroot?” she repeats, frowning at Cullen. He nods.

“It was all they could carry. The supplies squads we send out are small.”

“I recognize that,” Tamsin replies, pinching the bridge of her nose, “and I do appreciate their effort, but we have ample elfroot growing in our own garden. We sent the soldiers to the Hinterlands to gather iron ore and drakestone for Harritt.”

“I know.” Cullen rubs his forehead, and Tamsin peers at him from under her hand.

“I take it you already spoke to the soldiers.”

“Yes, Inquisitor.” He looks up at her, his expression uncomfortable. “And sent another squad for the metal.”

“Thank you, Commander.” Tamsin smiles crookedly at him. “I trust you will resolve whatever mixup resulted in this confusion.” Cullen nods again, chagrined. Tamsin wonders privately at her ability to chastise this great golden lion of a man. “Was there anything else? Leliana, Josephine?”

“No,” Josephine says. “I will need your attention on some matters tomorrow afternoon, I expect; we are awaiting correspondence from the Lady of Endhill.”

“I will be all yours.” Tamsin bows teasingly to Josephine, who smiles at her. “If that’s all, though, I must speak with Harritt and Maeve.”

“Inquisitor.” The three incline their heads to her, and Tamsin returns the gesture before leaving the council chamber. She is lost in thought, wondering how she is going to tell Harritt that his supplies are at least a week out, and so it isn’t until she is halfway to the stairs in the rotunda that she realizes Solas isn’t standing there.

He is sitting, actually at his desk, a troubled expression on his face. As Tamsin approaches, he lifts his tea cup and frowns into its depths.

“You drink tea now?” she asks.

“Of course not,” he replies, voice sour. “I can’t stand the stuff.” Tamsin raises an eyebrow at him and takes the mug from his hand; it’s her blend.

“Rude,” she teases, and his lips barely quirk. Tamsin drops the levity, frowning.

Solas answers her unspoken question: “But this morning, I need to shake the dreams from my mind. I may also need a favor.”

“A favor?” Tamsin repeats, surprised. “Ask away.”

“One of my oldest friends is in need,” Solas says, face grave and sorrowful. Tamsin knows immediately, before he finishes his request, that whatever he needs will be done.

“The Exalted Plains?” Dorian asks. “What a lovely name. I’m sure it lives up to it, and isn’t at all hiding dusty fields and brackish water behind pretty words.”

“Like you, Dorian?” Tamsin returns evenly. Dorian scoffs and places a hand over his heart.

“You wound me.”

“And you wound whoever named the Exalted Plains.” Tamsin returns the atlas to the shelf. “Will you come?”

“Miss a chance to hear Solas wax poetic about all the things I don’t know about spirits? I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Dorian catches the look Tamsin shoots him, and smiles. “I mean it, dear Inquisitor. I will be there. And who will be waving the sharp metal objects? Besides you, of course. Or will we be a fighting force of mages, graced by Vivienne’s presence?”

“Iron Bull, probably.” Tamsin frowns at Dorian. “You’re feisty today. What happened?”

Dorian opens his mouth, closes it, and tilts his head at her, a moment of transparency replaced by the same glib expression. “Why, nothing at all. I simply remembered what joy I find in simply being me.”

“As you should,” Tamsin coos, opting to play along. She gives him an appreciative up and down, which makes Dorian laugh, then kisses him on the cheek and turns to go.

“Careful there, Inquisitor,” Dorian purrs, much more loudly than he needs to, “You’ll make our resident elven apostate _terribly_ jealous.”

“Dorian!” Tamsin hisses, whirling to face him. She grabs  the closest book and tosses at his head, eliciting a crow of laughter from her friend, and storms off down the stairs. She has to pause halfway down to wait for her blush to fade; when she emerges on the bottom floor, Solas glances up and raises an eyebrow at her.

“Shush,” she mutters, waving a hand at him, and flushes even harder when Solas obediently presses his lips together. All subtlety lost, Tamsin yells, “I hate you sometimes, Dorian!” and escapes the rotunda, grinning despite herself at the laughter ringing through the tower.

Tamsin does ask Iron Bull to be their sharp-metal-object-waver; she relays that exact sequence of words to the Bull, who laughs heartily and agrees, muttering good-naturedly about how much better metal-waving is than stick waving, and Tamsin wonders as she leaves the tavern if she has made a terrible mistake in assembling the party this way. But Dorian, for what little love he has for spirits, is fiercely opposed to abuse of power in all its forms, and Bull is smart enough to keep his mouth shut about things like this. Hopefully they won’t kill each other on the trip.

And they don’t, for the most part. Bull and Dorian trade jabs about Tevinter and the Qun for the journey to the Exalted Plains, which keeps Tamsin and a subdued Solas mildly amused. They camp on the fringes of the Exalted Plains, near where Scout Harding met them, choosing to turn in early and save their energy rather than go charging across unfamiliar territory in what would soon be the dark. Harding and her companion soldiers join them for dinner, and Bull has everyone enraptured with a story of a terribly farcical job gone wrong when Tamsin realizes that she has not seen Solas for some time. Quietly, she stands and slips away from the fire to look for the mage.

She finds him sitting on the banks of the river, gazing towards their destination. Tamsin hangs back, keeping to the shadows, unsure if she would be interrupting something.

“I know you’re there,” Solas says quietly. Tamsin makes a face at his back and moves to stand beside him.

“How?” she asks quietly. She has spent a great deal of time and effort perfecting her stealth.

“I can hear you. Not with my ears. I am aware of your presence, just as I am of the Fade, or the places where the Veil is thin and spirits reach out to me.”

Tamsin looks down at him, and Solas glances up at her before looking back towards the horizon. “I can’t decide if that’s creepy or endearing.”

Solas doesn’t smile, but his voice is light when he replies: “Let us go with the more desirable option, I think?”

“Alright.” Tamsin sits down beside Solas and pulls off her boots. She scoots to the very edge of the bank and sticks her feet into the cold river, sighing with relief as it soothes the ache of days of walking and riding. “How are you doing?”

“I… I have been better.” Solas is behind her, so Tamsin can’t see his face, but she can hear the heaviness in his voice. “I cannot shake the cries in my dreams. I am eager to reach my friend.”

“Will we be okay, waiting through the night?” Tamsin asks.

“Yes. I believe so. The risk of approaching at night, with limited visibility after a day of travel is too great, and the cries I hear haven’t changed. I do not believe we are risking my friend’s safety by waiting.”

“Good.” Tamsin swishes her feet in the river for a moment, and then lays down on her back and looks up at the sky. They are silent, neither having anything to say; Solas is preoccupied with his concerns for his friend, and Tamsin is both tired and in a strangely introspective mood.

After a while, Tamsin’s eyes drift closed. She won’t fall asleep here—the cold water swirling around her feet won’t let her—but there is something strangely peaceful about the silence, with the faint echoes of Bull’s deep laughter and higher human voices in the distance. Fingertips drift across her forehead, and Tamsin opens her eyes as Solas brushes a lock of hair out of her face.

“Thank you,” he says quietly. “For allowing this.”

“You say that like this is forbidden,” Tamsin replies, equally soft. “Or discouraged. We are ensuring the safety of someone who matters to you, Solas. This is what this Inquisition is for.” She considers that statement for a moment, and then amends it: “This is what kind of Inquisitor I choose to be. Cassandra, Leliana and Josephine have their plans for the Inquisition as a whole, but this is my choice.”

“Thank you, then, for making this choice,” Solas says, and there is a smile at the edge of his mouth for the first time in days.

“Of course,” Tamsin replies. A pause, and then she sits up and pulls her feet out of the river, wincing at the sharpness of the grass against her half-numb skin. “Oh, my feet are half-frozen.”

“Here.” Solas leans forward and runs a hand down the top of both feet. A small bloom of warmth spreads from where his fingertips touch—not too much to ruin the good chill, but just enough that it no longer hurts Tamsin to wiggle her toes into the grass.

“Thank you,” she says, laying back down. Solas meets her grateful gaze, and nods.

“Solas…” Tamsin says, his name the start of a thought. She has too many questions and doesn’t know where to begin. Has he made a decision? Does he need more time? Was she mad for wishing with every fiber of her being that he would kiss her right now, despite everything else that was happening? But Solas shakes his head minutely, and she swallows any attempt at actually asking.

“Not now,” he says, though it sounds more like a request. Or a plea. “Do not ask me this now.”

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, face hot with guilt. She shouldn’t even have entertained the idea. How selfish is she? “I’m so sorry.”

“No, don’t apologize.” Solas brushes away another offending lock of hair, his fingertips gentle against her skin. “I know how frustrating it can be to have a question and be denied the answer. I should be the one apologizing.”

“Are you really denying me the answer, though?” Tamsin asks. “If you don’t know it yourself?”

Solas smiles, a smile that starts at the corner of his lips and spreads slowly. Tamsin wonders at that, and opens her mouth to ask what's so amusing when Solas leans down and kisses her.

It is all gentleness, none of the restrained passion of their first kiss, but it makes Tamsin melt all the same. It is short, tender and chaste, and Tamsin wonders suddenly if she is going to cry.

“I’m sorry,” he says, pulling away. “I should not have—“

“No, don’t.” Tamsin grabs at his hand, keeping him from standing. “Don’t do that again. Don’t regret kissing me. I know you don’t know what they mean or what you want, but I just…” She swallows her words, unsure of where they were going or if she should have said anything at all. Solas watches her, guarded but unmoving, and Tamsin tries again.

“I know you have doubts, and that you don’t know what you want,” she says quietly. “But I like it when you kiss me. It won’t break my heart if you kiss me without being sure of what it means. But if every kiss makes you cringe and shrink with regret, that… please don’t do that. I _really_ like it when you kiss me.”

Solas nods slowly. “I don’t know what it means, lethallan,” he murmurs, “And I don’t have an answer for you.”

“I know.”

“I like kissing you, as well.” It’s hard to tell in the darkness, but Tamsin could swear he blushed. The admission fills her with a warm, fizzing feeling. She hadn’t realized that she was worried he _didn’t_ like it until now.

“One more?” she asks. “Just one, before you go.”

Solas considers this, then nods. Tamsin expects a repeat of the last kiss, swift and gentle, but instead of quickly leaning down, Solas pulls her up to a sitting position. He takes her chin in his hand, leans forward, and kisses her nose.

“Oh _come_ on, you—“ Tamsin sputters, and Solas silences her with a real kiss. She melts into him. She can’t help it. This is tender, too, but a different kind of tender, an _I’m here_ sort of tender that doesn’t last nearly long enough. Tamsin is glad she is sitting down, because if she had been standing when he kissed her like this, her knees would have gone weak.

Solas pulls back far too soon. “Thank you,” he whispers, though for what Tamsin doesn’t know, then he stands and walks back to camp.

Tamsin’s back hits the ground with a _fwump,_ and she stares up at the stars, pressing a hand to her lips. Well.

 

* * *

 

Their first sign that something is wrong is the bodies. “One of the mages. Looks like bandits,” Bull muses as they pause by the first corpse with its fletched decorations.

“Charming,” Dorian mutters with a wrinkle of his nose.

“Really, Vint? After all we’ve seen, a body with some arrows bothers you?”

“It’s not the body,” Dorian protests. “It’s this heat. That will be a bubbling gaseous mess in three days.”

“Tevinter must smell like a hellhole, then, with all that heat and blood magic.”

“Tevinter is _clean_ , you colossal fu—“

“Knock it off, you two,” Tamsin orders. They comply, more out of surprise that she interrupted than anything else. Ahead of them, there is another body in the road. This one is blackened and burnt, the form rent by something massive. Solas kneels beside it.

“These aren’t mages,” he says, voice hard. “The bodies are burned, and these claw marks—“ He stops, and then, a desperate hiss, “No. No, no, _no._ ”

They continue down the path. Round a bend, Tamsin can see stark white spires in the distance, and beside her, Solas grows so tense she can feel it in her own shoulders. As they near the spires, she can make out what’s inside: a form, massive and hunched over, spines and horns growing from every part of its body.

Solas’s gasp of horror stabs at Tamsin’s heart. “My friend,” he whispers, and then lets out a growl of rage.

“The mages…” Tamsin’s voice is hushed. “They turned your friend into a demon.”

Solas looks at her, fury in his eyes, his hands gripping together. “Yes.”

“I thought you said it was a spirit of wisdom, not a fighter?”

“A spirit becomes a demon when denied its original purpose,” Solas spits, looking down and forcibly untangling his fingers.

“So they summoned it for something so opposed to its nature that it was corrupted? Fighting?”

Grass rustles, and in the corner of Tamsin’s eye, Iron Bull tenses. She turns to see a man creeping out from the bushes. He’s middle-aged and chubby, with a weak chin, a mustache that she knows Dorian is internally mocking, and desperate hope in his eyes. “A mage?” he asks. “You’re not with the bandits?”

Behind Tamsin, Dorian scoffs quietly, and she resists the urge to glare at him.

“Do you have any lyrium potions?” the mage asks. “Most of us are exhausted. We’ve been fighting that demon—“

“You _summoned_ that demon!” Solas hisses. Tamsin has never seen him this angry, and opts not to get in the way. “But it was a spirit of wisdom at the time, and you made it kill! You twisted it against its purpose!”

“I-I-“ the mage stutters, taken aback by Solas’s anger. “I understand how it might be confusing to someone who has not studied demons…” Dorian scoffs again, and Tamsin has to resist the urge to laugh derisively with him. “After you help us, I can—“

“We are not _here_ to help _you_ ,” Solas snarls. His voice has gone rough with rage.

 “Listen to me!” The mage implores. “I was one of the foremost experts in the Kirkwall Circle—“

“Shut. _up._ ” Sola steps forward. “You summoned it to protect you from the bandits.”

“I… yes.”

“You bound it to obedience, then commanded it to kill. _That_ is when it turned.” Solas turns to Tamsin, the anger in his voice turned imploring. “The summoning circle. We break it, we break the binding—no orders to kill, no conflict with its nature, no demon.”

“What?” The mage sputters before Tamsin can reply. “The binding is the only thing keeping the demon from killing us! Whatever it was before, it is a monster now.”

“Inquisitor,” Solas says. His voice is desperate. _“Please.”_

Tamsin has studied rituals like this, during her endless hours in the library. She knows he is correct, but he doesn’t need her to tell him that, and her validation matters little in this moment. Instead, she simply says, “Yes.”

“Thank you,” Solas murmurs. In the binding circle, the demon lurches to its feet and roars. The mage yelps and scrambles past them, as Solas pulls his staff from his back. “We must hurry.”

Iron Bull doesn’t need direction. He charges the demon, bellowing a war cry, and leaps out of the way as the demon swings for him. Solas, Tamsin and Dorian sprint to the pillars. They explode at a handful of spells from the mages, and Tamsin realizes quickly that blunt force will do better here. She switches her daggers around her in her hands and slams the pommel into the pillar. It shatters after a handful of blows. In the middle of the circle, Iron Bull roars: “Come at me, you big lunk! You sorry excuse for a beast, your claws couldn’t cut clay! I dare you! Come— _shit!_ ” Tamsin turns to see him leap out of the way of a swipe, and then dance backwards, crowing all the while. He never raises his axe.

They make short work of the binding circle, and Tamsin feels an intense swell of pride for her party. The demon vanishes, replaced by a woman’s form glowing with the green light of the rifts. Solas approaches her slowly. Tamsin can see his face from where she stands; she has never seen him in so much pain.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers in Elvhen.

The spirit responds in kind, “I’m not. I’m happy. I’m me again.” Its voice sounds like it is gasping for air. “You helped me. Now you must endure. Guide me into death.”

Solas looks down, closes his eyes briefly, then looks back up. “As you say,” he whispers, and extends his hands towards the spirit. There is a moment of silence, and then a gust of wind, and the spirit’s light is carried away into nothing. Solas looks at his hands, and whispers, “Dareth shiral.” It is a farewell.

“I… I’m sorry, Solas,” Tamsin says. “It was right, though. You did help it.”

“Now,” Solas says, though whether he’s speaking to her or his palms is unclear, “I must endure.”

“Let me know if I can help,” she whispers, her voice cracking. Solas stands and turns toward her, and the sorrow on his face is softened by gratitude.

“You already have,” he murmurs. Then his expression hardens, and he turns. “Now, all that remains is _them._ ”

“Thank you!” cries the mage, coming towards them. There are two more behind him, their faces blackened and clothes bloodied. “We didn’t want to risk a summoning, but the roads, and the bandits—“

“You,” Solas growls, advancing on him, “tortured and killed my friend!”

“We didn’t know it was just a spirit!” the mage protests. “The book said it could help us!”

Fire coalesces  in Solas’s hands. In Tamsin’s peripheral vision, Dorian steps forward and Iron Bull shifts uncertainly.

Tamsin resists the urge to sigh. She knows what it is to feel rage. If what Solas feels towards this mage is any fraction of how she feels towards Corypheus, she can only imagine the fury burning in his throat. She also knows that he will kill unless she steps in. “ _Solas_ ,” she says, pulling her voice from that place in her chest of steel and dragon bone. Solas stops and turns to her. There is something like hatred in his gaze, and she _fights_ the urge to appease him. _No,_ she thinks, willing her gaze to be as hard as her will. He challenges her for a moment, black fury in his eyes, and then shutters completely. Tamsin’s heart sinks as he turns away from her.

“Never again,” Solas snarls to the mages, then says to the air to Tamsin’s left, “I need some time alone. I will meet you back at Skyhold, Inquisitor.” Tamsin closes her eyes against the insult in the title. Solas turns and walks away.

The mages fall to their knees at Tamsin’s feet, and she looks to Dorian, hoping that he will see her intense struggle not to kick them in the head. To her great relief, he does, and he shoots her a tiny smile. “You,” she snaps to the mages, “Come with me.”

They lead them back to the base camp, where Tamsin lectures them on abuse of power and arrogance for a full fifteen minutes, then declares that her soldiers will see them safe to their destination, and if she or any member of the Inquisition catches word of them summoning spirits or demons ever again, there _will_ be consequences. Then she, Dorian and Iron Bull set out in search of some bandits to kill.

“Are we terrible people, do you think?” Tamsin asks much later. They’re standing on the shore. Dorian is stretched out on a rock, shirtless, soaking up the sun while Iron Bull cleans viscera off his great axe and Tamsin washes her overcoat in the water.

“Terrible people?” Dorian asks, cracking open an eye. “Whatever do you mean?”

“Killing like this.” Tamsin gestures to the plain behind them, which is littered with bodies. “I always wonder if we shouldn’t be doing something else. Locking them up, or something. This… at some point this isn’t self defense.”

“Nah,” Bull says, gathering a fresh handful of damp sand. “It’s always self-defense. They attacked us.”

“That’s kind of a weak excuse. We did go looking for them.”

“It’s a perfect excuse,” Dorian argues. “If they ever opt to wave us on our merry way, why then, no killing necessary. And besides, what would you do? Lock up a bunch of petty thieves and murders and feed and clothe them on the Inquisition’s dime? They’re a waste of air, honestly. No reforming possible here.”

“I don’t know. People say Tevinters are a waste of air, and here you are.” Tamsin’s hiding a smile.

“I’ll have you know,” Dorian grumbles, raising his head to glare at her. “That I am too marvelously handsome to be a waste of air. I gleam in the sun, Inquisitor. Look at this.” He gestures to his chest, which is less gleaming than it is shiny with sweat and the blood that soaked through his tunic.

“What glorious gleaming,” Tamsin coos  indulgently, and Iron Bull chuckles.

After exacting their revenge on the bandit population, Tamsin and her companions feel much better. They return to Skyhold the next morning. Even if they had wanted to stay, anything they could have accomplished would be better and more safely done  with a fourth member of their party, and Tamsin would prefer to avoid a lecture from her advisors about unnecessary risks.

 Solas has not yet returned, and so they field questions with varying amounts of tact; Dorian delights in inventing absurd and wild tales of elven debauchery that fool absolutely no one. Tamsin quietly asks Cullen to make sure the guards notify her when Solas returns, and they do so two days later. Solas is just crossing the bridge as Tamsin walks down the steps to the lower courtyard. He looks the same as always. His steps might be a little heavier, but he meets her gaze with the same composure, and his voice is even when he greets her: “Inquisitor.” She manages not to wince at the title, remembering how he raged off last time she saw him.

“How are you, Solas?” she asks softly. His composure slips, and his voice softens when he replies.

“It hurts. It always does, but I will survive.”

“Thank you for coming back,” Tamsin was truly worried he wouldn’t, for a while.

“You are a true friend. You did everything you could to help. I could hardly abandon you now.”

Tamsin’s cheeks pink. She was truly worried by his reaction to her… pulling rank, for lack of a better phrase, and his kindness is a relief. There is so much she wants to ask, but he is weary. She swallows her questions. “The next time you have to mourn, you don’t have to be alone.”

Solas laughs humorlessly, and looks down. “It’s been so long since I could trust someone,” he murmurs, almost to himself.

“I can tell,” Tamsin says softly. Solas looks up and meets her eyes.

“I’ll work on it,” he promises. “And thank you.”


	4. Frustration Somewhat Abated

 

Time passes, and days blur into weeks. Tamsin returns to the Exalted Plains with a party that doesn’t include Solas, out of respect for the painful memories, though she regrets that decision when they meet a Dalish clan on the shores of the river. She is Dalish, true, but having something like a _hahren_ with them would have been nice. They open a treatise with the Dalish, secure their presence in the Storm Coast, and then Tamsin receives word of a Grey Warden in Crestwood.

She sends scouts to survey the area, speaks with Blackwall, travels to Val Royeaux with Vivienne, Cassandra and Dorian for supplies and gossip. It is an easy trip, bright and joyful, and Vivienne and Dorian snark at each other the entire time. Tamsin feels as though she shouldn’t approve, but she and Cassandra share more than a few amused looks. They have the coin to spare for expensive ore, fabric, and runes, and Tamsin’s mind is full of the shiny, destructive toys she will make when they return to Skyhold.

She asks her companions what they would like, if she can find the supplies. Some—like Cole—are happy with what they have. Iron Bull gestures to his great axe and declares that the only thing that could make it better would be dragon bone, which Tamsin doesn’t have, but she stores the information away for later. Others are pleased by the gesture, but have only slight requests to make—a new hilt, aiming mechanism, blades for the ends of Sera’s longbow, which Tamsin is not sure she can accomplish. Vivienne supplies her own schematic, of course, Blackwall shrugs in his stoic way, which Tamsin is beginning to recognize as occasional shyness, and Dorian gives her a foot-long list of requirements that they both know she will use as tinder in her hearth. When Tamsin stops to see Solas, it is the first time they have been face to face for more than a passing moment in almost two weeks. “Inquisitor,” he says when he sees her enter his study, his face lighting up. “I was… do you have a moment?”

“Sure,” she says, her questions about weapons lost in the way his eyes make her stomach flip. They wander up to her balcony, the only place where Tamsin can guarantee privacy, as she can see it’s something Solas would like. He is quiet as they walk, clearly contemplative.

When they reach her balcony, he gazes out at the mountains for a minute before speaking. “What were you like, before the Anchor?” he asks. Tamsin tilts her head, considers her hand, but before she can answer, Solas elaborates. “Has it affected you? Changed you in any way? Your mind, your morals, your… spirit?”

Tamsin is perplexed by the question. “If it had, would I have noticed?”

Solas considers this. “No. That’s an excellent point.”

“Why do you ask?”

“You…” Solas turns, places his hands on the balcony railing and looking towards the horizon. “You show a wisdom I have not seen since… since my deepest journeys into the ancient memories of the Fade. You are not what I expected.”

Tamsin walks over and leans her forearms on the balustrade beside him, gazing out at the mountains, which are tinted purple by the setting sun. “I’m sorry to disappoint,” she says cheerfully. Her hours planning presents and tinkering away in the undercroft have left her feeling cheeky. Solas shakes his head.

“It’s not disappointing, it’s…” he stops, inhales. “Most people are predictable.”

“How very boring,” she sighs, and Solas catches the lilt of the joke in her voice. He smiles briefly at her, then looks back towards the horizon.

“You have shown a subtlety in your actions, a wisdom that goes against everything I expected.” He has her attention now. This isn’t flattery. “If the Dalish could raise someone like a spirit like yours… have I misjudged them?”

Tamsin’s levity dies. Perhaps it was a good thing Solas wasn’t with them in the Exalted Plains… she has forgotten how little regard he holds for the Dalish, and it stings a bit.

“My people aren’t perfect,” she replies, careful with her words, “but we have history and strength. There is always something worth honoring. We’re trying to do right by that, by our memories of the ancient ways.”

“Perhaps that is it,” Solas allows. “I suppose it must be. Most people act with so little understanding of the world. But not you.”

Tamsin turns, rests her weight on one arm so she can face him. He meets her gaze. “Where are you going with this?”

“I have not forgotten the answers I promised you.” His tone is careful and even, but it makes Tamsin’s skin sing anyway.

“Oh?” she asks, straightening. They haven’t been this close in weeks. Hell, they haven’t _touched_ since the Exalted Plains. Tamsin watches his eyes, sees his gaze travel from her eyes, to her lips, a little lower, then back up—and because she’s watching, she sees the doubt when it appears, overrides whatever else was sparking there.

He turns away. _Not again,_ Tamsin thinks desperately, and catches his arm. “Don’t go,” she begs, a little ashamed of her own desperation. “Please. It’s unfair to mention answers and then deny them.” Solas is still, and she takes a stab in the dark. “Lying by omission is still lying, lethallin.”

Solas stiffens, and she wonders if she misstepped. Slowly, he turns back to her.

“You don’t want to be lied to,” he says, and it’s more an observation than a question. There is something damning in the words. Tamsin swallows, loosens her grip but doesn’t let go.

“No one does,” she says gently, “and I always prefer honesty in action.”

“In action?”

Tamsin takes a chance and runs her hand down his arm to touch his palm questioningly. Solas lets her twine their fingers together, and when she squeezes gently, he returns the grip. His gaze never leaves hers, and Tamsin is struck by the impression that whatever she says next is more important than she can fathom.

“We can’t always articulate emotions,” she says carefully. “Sometimes we say things we don’t mean, because we’re trying to stumble our way into the right thing. I’ve done that a lot. I’d always rather my friends and loved ones are honest with how they treat me, even if they don’t have the words.” Tamsin smiles crookedly at a memory. “I had a friend who would always tell me that everything was fine, but would be quiet and keep her distance when she was mad at me. It turned into a massive fight that had our hahren screaming at us both. I would have preferred it if she’d just told me to fuck off, honestly.”

Solas chokes on a laugh, and she smiles up at him.

“Does that make sense? Even if you’re unsure whether things will stay the same, even if you know something bad may come to pass, all I’m asking for in this moment is honesty. We could both die tomorrow, or next week, or in twenty years. I’d rather not lose out to the threat of someday.”  

“I… see,” Solas says slowly, and Tamsin can see conflict in his eyes that makes her nervous.

“Even if it’s ugly,” she adds on a whim, “even if it’s not the whole truth, truth is always better than a lie.”

“I thought you said lying by omission was still lying.”

Tamsin pauses. How can she articulate the difference? “Yes,” she says slowly, “but there’s a big difference between pretending there’s nothing to be said, and admitting that you can’t or don’t know how to say it in the moment. The latter is fine.”

“You have a lot of rules about truth.”

“They’re not _rules_ ,” she protests, flushing. “I just… how do you put words to  instinct? It’s what I’m trying to do. I’m not very good at it, though.”

Solas looks amused and sad at the same time. “Ever honest, then.”

“I’m an open book,” she admits. “I’ll be horrific at the Winter Palace. Josie will have a fit trying to keep me from destroying everything we’ve done with just my face.”

“You are easy to read,” he agrees, and cracks a smile when Tamsin smacks his arm gently. “It is the truth, lethallan.”

“Thank you for your honesty,” she replies primly, and his smile widens before disappearing.

“I do not have all the answers you want. And some… some you  may hate me for, in time. I will never be everything you want of me.”

Tamsin swallows. She can recognize a budding rejection when she hears it—and is a little irritated by his presumption.

“Please don’t presume to know what I want,” she says, and one of his eyebrows rises a hair before he inclines his head.

“I’m sorry,” he replies, and his tone turns a little wry. “You have surprised me at every turn. I expect you will do so in this, as well. I am afraid it will not be enough.”

“Tell me this, then,” Tamsin says, knowing her disappointment shows on her face, “Do you know how you feel?” She doesn’t want to coerce him. But, the way he kisses her, the way his eyes linger and he does small kind things for her day after day... these are not the actions of  an ambivalent man. She just wants it to make _sense_ , and him turning his back is at utter odds with everything he has shown her.

Solas blinks at her, and for a moment, he is an open book as well—one filled with conflict. “In this moment,” Tamsin adds. “Only now. It’s where you have to start. That’s all.”  

“… I do.”

“Do… do you want to stop this?”

“It would be kinder in the long run,” Solas says, and his tone is mournful and certain. Tamsin swallows.

“Solas…”

“But…” he hesitates, inhales. “Losing you would…” He trails off, brushes her hair back from her face with his free hand. Tamsin closes her eyes at the tender touch.

“We’ll all lose each other eventually, Solas,” she says softly. “In this war, sooner rather than later. I, at least, would rather enjoy whatever this is, or can be, before that happens.”

Solas stares down at her, and after a long moment, something in his gaze settles into place.

“You are a wise woman, Tamsin Lavellan,” he murmurs, leans down, and kisses her.

Tamsin kisses him back gently, so gently, afraid to let the elation in her chest bubble up and scare him off, because she wants this so very badly. He is so gentle, so soft, testing his own conviction, and Tamsin lets him lead. _Stay_ , she begs him in her mind. _Stay. Please stay. Don’t turn your back on me, lethallin_. She’s too afraid to think it, even, but she knows she’s falling too hard, too fast; if he turns his back on her, her heart might crack.

He kisses her again, and then pulls back. Tamsin meets his gaze, almost afraid of what she’ll find. He is gazing at  her with a softness in his eyes, a fondness she hasn’t seen in a while—and more than that, as she watches, there is certainty.

“Honesty in action, is it?” he murmurs, and the timbre of his voice sends shivers under her skin. Something in his face flares, darkens into a decidedly dangerous shade, and Tamsin wonders briefly if she’ll finally get to see that fierce and trembling thing he hinted at all those weeks ago.

“At the very least,” she replies, dropping her voice to match his, and the barest smirk shows on Solas’s face before he ducks in and kisses her again. This is gentle, too, but when he slips his arm around her waist and pulls her in tight, when she gasps ever so-softly as their bodies align thigh-to-chest, he hums appreciatively and laves his tongue across her bottom lip. She opens to him immediately, wrapping her arms around his neck, and it’s as if she struck a flint.

Solas whirls, walks her back two steps and presses her up against the wall of the keep. He kisses her _deeply,_ tasting and teasing. Tamsin does her best to match him, though she’s limited by his body pinning her—not that she’s complaining. Her lips will be swollen and sore, and it will be _worth_ it. She nips at his bottom lip before soothing with a swipe of her tongue that tastes of ozone and spice. One of his hands cradles her head, protecting it from the rough stone, as the other slides down her side, tracing the dip and curve of her tunic and leggings--and then flexes and drags blunt nails slowly up the outside of her thigh. Tamsins gasps at the bolt of heat it sends straight to her core.

_Oh_ , she thinks, feeling his smirk against her lips. _Oh, this will be good. … I don’t have a council meeting, do I?_ She’s pretty sure she doesn’t. She also really doesn’t care.

Tamsin trails a hand up the nape of Solas’ neck, nails tripping lightly over the sensitive skin, and he shivers. “Tamsin,” he growls when she repeats the motion, delighted in the response she gets. Curious, she runs a gentle fingertip over the shell of his ear, and is rewarded with a magnificent shudder right before Solas grabs both her wrists and pins them to the wall above her head. With one hand. Which she really shouldn’t find as utterly erotic as she does.

“Tamsin,” Solas growls again, his voice rough. She looks up at him, smiling innocently. His eyes flicker to her lips and then darken. Experimentally, she licks her bottom lip, and watches with delight as Solas’ breath hitches.

“Yes?”

“Be careful of what you might be starting,” he warns, eyes raking across her face and down her neck. Tamsin tilts her head invitingly, experimentally, and is rewarded when he leans in and places a torturously delicate kiss on her throat.

“Honesty in action,” she purrs, and Solas huffs a laugh before nipping, sharp and sudden, at her neck. Tamsin’s yelp melts into a moan as he runs his tongue across the mark, and then up to taste the underside of her chin.

“It’s a dangerous request,” he warns.

“You talk a big game for a bald hermit,” Tamsin teases, and Solas pulls back to stare at her. Tamsin realizes, suddenly, with a surge of disappointment, that she may have just _completely_ ruined the mood.

 And then Solas bursts out laugh. Tamsin stares at him in surprise—she hears him laugh, really laugh, so _rarely_. It’s a warm, full sound.

“Yes,” he agrees, releasing her wrists—again to her disappointment—and then pulling her in—which is less disappointing—and kissing her. “I will have time, I think, to prove that you should listen to your elders, but you have a council meeting shortly.”

“I do not,” Tamsin objects.

“Yes, Inquisitor, you do.” Solas covers her mouth before she can protest and pulls her towards the open balcony door. There, without the roar of the wind in her ears, Tamsin can hear the rat-a-tat-tat of a soldier on the door to her chambers, and the faint call of “The council requests your presence, Inquisitor!”

“You have terrible timing,” Tamsin snarls at the door, knowing that the soldier can’t hear her, and then turns back to Solas. He’s smiling faintly, amused at her ire.

“Responsibilities often do,” he notes, scrutinizing her face. Before Tamsin can ask what he’s looking for, he raises a glimmering hand and traces her lips with a very cold fingertip. “I’m sorry to do it,” he murmurs, “But it would be best if it wasn’t quite so _blindingly_ obvious what we’ve been up to.”

Tamsin touches her mouth as he drops his hand, and finds that he’s eased the swollen sensitivity in her lips. She appreciates the gesture and is a touch disappointed at the same time. Solas smiles at her facial expression and leans down, pressing the softest of kisses to her chilly lips.

“Now go,” Solas says, nudging her towards the door. Tamsin wrinkles her nose at him, then sighs. _Here we go_. She draws her spine tall and her shoulders back, and starts down the stairs.

“I hear you, soldier,” she says once she’s close enough to be heard through the door, and the knocking immediately stops.

“My apologies, Inquisitor.” The soldier salutes when she opens the door—she still finds that unnerving—and then steps out of the way. Tamsin nods to him and walks on, resisting the urge to look over her shoulder for Solas. She knows where to find him, and they both know duty comes first. Unfortunately.

 A breeze slips through the door just before the soldier closes it and curls around her ear. “ _Ar lath ma, vhenan,”_ it whispers to her, and vanishes.

 


	5. Kisses and Books

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is one of those long-ass continuous scenes that are very difficult to break up without totally destroying flow.  
> So, bulk update! Heyyyyyy.

 

“Did you send that breeze?” is the first thing Tamsin says when she walks into the rotunda very early the next morning.

Solas—does he _ever_ sleep?—glances up, raising an eyebrow. “Good morning.”

“Good morning. Did you send that breeze?”

“Which one?” Solas straightens up from the book he’s reading, giving her his full attention.

“The one that said _ar lath ma_ ,” she says, feeling herself go red.

“Ah.” Solas nods, and there is a hint of pink on his cheeks as well as he settles back into his chair. “Yes. I did.”

“You can send words in the wind?” That wasn’t the question she wanted to ask, but Tamsin is terribly curious about how that works.

“Sort of. It’s a complicated bit of spellwork that involves attaching sound wards to a parcel of energy and sending it away from the caster. It’s impractical for battle, unfortunately, as it can be disrupted or destroyed by a crosswind or a projectile, and can’t be sent very far. It also—“  Solas stops suddenly, studying Tamsin. “That was not what you wanted to ask.”

“I did want to know the answer,” Tamsin protests, but the excuse is thin, and they both know it. All the same, she suddenly finds the words stuck in her throat. She glances down at her palms, where the Anchor is (annoyingly) spitting green sparks. It always does that when she gets nervous or angry. She’ll need to get control of that before the Winter Palace. Solas follows her gaze. There is silence for a moment, and then he leans away, lifts a mug from the corner of his desk and offers it to her.

“Tea?”

“Yes please.” Tamsin approaches and takes it from him. Her flush worsens as she draws close, until she’s sure her entire face is bright pink. Solas watches her sedately, gaze steady and patient.

She sips slowly from the mug, willing her hands to steady themselves and the damn Anchor to stop flashing. _You’ve already made out with him_ , she snaps internally, exasperated with herself. _Get it together. You’re acting like a teenager._

But it’s Solas that speaks first. “Are you having second thoughts?” he asks.

“No!” Tamsin blurts mid-swallow, and inhales her mouthful of tea. She immediately dissolves into a coughing fit. Solas rescues the mug from her hand as she turns away, doubles over and does her best not to hack up a lung for the next minute and a half.

When she finally straightens and turns back to face him, her eyes watering, Solas glances at her front and his expression twitches. Tamsin looks down to find she has dribbled bright red tea all down the front of her brown tunic.

“Shit,” she swears, dabbing at it with her sleeve as if that would help. “I don’t… how do I…” Tamsin dabs a few more times, then drops her arm and stares down at Solas.

“That was not how any of this was supposed to go. Can we start over, please?”

Solas chuckles and waves his free hand. The tea vanishes from Tamsin’s tunic.

“No redos necessary, _vhenan_ ,” he says gently. “What did you wish to ask me?”

“Did you mean it?” Tamsin blurts before she can lose her nerve. “ _Ar lath ma._ Did you mean it?”

“Ah.” There it is again, that hint of pink in his cheeks and at the tips of his ears. She finds it utterly endearing. “Yes. I did.”

“I thought…” Tamsin takes her mug back and stares into it, as if it could offer answers. “I thought you didn’t know how you feel.”

“I never said that. I simply did not know how to act.”

“Honesty in actions,” Tamsin realizes, looking up. Solas nods.

“I came to the realization that I was being dishonest by acting as if my feelings for you are not… compelling,” he admits, leaning forward in his chair. “I feel very strongly for you. I was not sure how to weigh those feelings against the inevitable.” Tamsin tilts her head at his word choice, but he continues on. “When we spoke last night, I realized that…” Here he pauses, frowning. “I am not sure how to put it into words.”

“That’s alright.” Tamsin takes his hand, and he squeezes her fingers. “You don’t have to know right now. I spilled tea all over myself trying to use words. They’re not working out for  us very well this morning.”

Solas smiles. “So it seems. It is an unusual sensation, for me.”

“I’m sure it is,” Tamsin teases, and leans over for the kiss she’s wanted since she woke up this morning. “That was all I wanted to ask about that,” she adds when he lets her go, and he nods, content to let the subject be. “But I have another request. I have to go back to the Fallow Mire  in two days. Would you like to come?”

“You are offering, instead of commanding?” Solas asks, raises an eyebrow. “ _Vhenan_ , this does not bode well for our personal and professional relationships interfering.”

“Hush.” Tamsin scowls at him. “We’re going in to take a keep Harding spotted. I’m trying to be considerate.”

“So you are,” he agrees, eyes flickering to her lips. Tamsin takes a chance and leans in again, and he kisses her slow and sweet before continuing. “Yes, I will come with you to the Fallow Mire. Who else are you planning on bringing?”

“Bull, at least; he’s going a bit stir-crazy. Krem found me last night and begged me to take him on our next outing. Apparently he’s trying to convince two of the barmaids to have a threesome.”

Solas’s brows raise. “That’s a symptom of boredom? I was under the impression that is just how the Iron Bull is.”

“So did I.” Tamsin grins. “I can’t decide who else to ask. We don’t need a second warrior tromping around in the water with all those undead.” She grimaces at the memory. Solas nods contemplatively.

“If I may offer a suggestion,” he says slowly, “I believe it could be of some interest to bring Cole. I admit it is a self-serving curiosity, but his perceptiveness may prove unique in that environment.”

“You want to bring him to see what weird things he says.”

“I… yes.”

“Sure, I’ll ask him.” Tamsin beams at Solas, and he returns her smile fondly.

There is silence for a moment, and then he asks softly, “Was there something else, _vhenan_?”

“No,” Tamsin admits, dropping his hand reluctantly. “I just wanted to stay. I’ll leave you to your work.” She turns away, but Solas catches her arm before she can take more than a single step.

“I would not mind if you stayed,” he admits, voice soft. “I appreciate your company.” Tamsin can feel herself blush.

“I like yours, too,” she admits, taking a step closer, and then another, until she’s tucked into the space between his chair and the desk. She looks back to make sure she’s not about to sit on anything important, then hops up on the edge of the desk.

Solas raises an eyebrow at her, thoughts she can’t read flickering across his gaze. After a moment he straightens  in his chair and leans forward, gently nudging her knees apart until his stomach is bracketed by her thighs. Tamsin inhales sharply.

“Good morning,” he says, in a deep, rough tone of voice that suddenly has her _very_ awake.

“Good morning,” she purrs back at him, studying his face. “What are you thinking?”

Solas hums noncommittally instead of answering her question, still studying her face. His arms come down to rest on either side of her thighs, his hands landing gently on her hips. He runs his fingertips softly across the fabric of her leggings, occasionally brushing against the slip of skin showing between tunic and trouser. Every pass raises goosebumps on her skin.   

“Are you doing anything to your hands?”

“What do you mean?” Solas asks.

“Anything  magical. That tingles.” She looks down at  his hands, and  he follows her gaze.

“I have cast no spells,” he tells her. _It’s just him_ , Tamsin realizes, and  the heat coiling in her belly draws tight. Solas presses a kiss to the underside of her jaw, eliciting a sharp inhale, and slowly slips his fingertips under the hem of her tunic. Tamsin shivers.  He raises his eyes to her face as he runs the pad of his thumb across the curve of her hipbone, studying her reaction; Tamsin bites down gently on the inside of her lip and stays very still.

“Do not stifle yourself,” Solas murmurs, standing and  placing the gentlest of kisses on her cheek. Tamsin relaxes, and in that moment, he presses blunted nails into her hips and pulls her in to the very edge of the desk.

He might as well have laced his hands with lightning. Tamsin gasps and arches her back. Solas catches her in a kiss before she can bite her lip again, and the moan she was trying to stifle rolls between their mouths. His grip firms as he kisses her fiercely, that wild and trembling thing just under the surface—

High above, Dorian coughs.

It would have been a polite cough, a delicate Orlesian “pardon  me” of a cough, if he didn’t immediately yell “Get a tent, you two!”

Tamsin pulls back and presses her flame-red face into Solas’s shoulder. He exhales on a great and weary sigh, and calls back, “A tent, Dorian?”

“Isn’t that how you do it?” From the change in volume, Dorian’s leaning over the railing now, looking down at them. Tamsin muffles a giggle in Solas’s shoulder, and feels his ribs rise and fall with an amused huff. “Out among the birds and the trees and all that nature nonsense?”

“Such disdain for our natural world,” Solas notes mildly. Tamsin can feel his hands carefully retreating from under her tunic and smoothing it back into place, and she adores him for it. “That sort of arrangement can be quite appealing, in the right circumstance.” She lifts her head at that, meeting his gaze with a touch of confusion. Solas’s eyes are sparkling, and he’s got an amused twist to his lips. “Even I know stars can be terribly romantic.”

Tamsin glances over at Dorian;  he’s rolling his eyes so hard she’s surprised they don’t fall out.

“I must admit, though,” Solas continues in a thoughtful tone, “that I prefer more… traditional settings. The merits of a comfortable bed should not be underestimated.” He pauses, looking at Tamsin, and adds, “Comfortable, and very sturdy.”

 Tamsin suddenly can’t quite breathe.

“Oh, Maker preserve us all from your dusty attempts at saccharine seduction,” Dorian wails, disappearing over the other side of the railing. Tamsin barely notices.

“Well.” Solas kisses the tip of her nose and then steps back. “I suppose we should get started with our day, Inquisitor. The rest of the keep will be awake soon, if our ornery Tevinter friend is any indication. I’m surprised there aren’t more people in the rotunda at this hour, to be honest.” He looks at her for a moment, and then offers a hand. “Would you like assistance?”

Tamsin takes his hand and slides off the desk. She’s lucky her legs hold her up.

Solas plucks her mug from the desk, reheats it with a twirl of his fingers, and presses it into her hands. “Come, Inquisitor,” he says in his unfairly even and unruffled voice, “We depart the day after tomorrow, correct?” He presses a hand to the small of her back and steers her towards the door. “I believe you have a party to assemble.”

Tamsin finally finds her voice in the doorway. She turns back to face Solas, fixes him with the sternest glare she can muster—which  isn’t much—and says “I will get you back for that.”

Solas blinks at her, and then he smirks. “I certainly hope so,” he murmurs, leans  in for a fast and fierce kiss that leaves her breathless, and then nudges her out the door.

Tamsin retreats to the undercroft, taking time to gather her thoughts. _Damn him_ , she thinks without venom, when the dizzying fog lifts. They’re about to leave for the _Fallow Mire_ , too. Despite Dorian’s suggestion, a tent sounds like an utterly horrific idea, especially in that bog.

“Get it together,” Tamsin tells herself, taking a bracing breath of cold waterfall air. She has things to do. First, recruiting Cole and Bull. Then packing. Then, maybe, Solas. For a couple of hours. Or a day or two. _Can I get away with pushing our departure back_? Even as she thinks it, she knows it’s not an option. She can picture the look Solas would give her: brow raised, eyes narrow, a mixture of amusement and disappointment on his face at her twisted priorities.  And Dorian would _never_ let her live it down.

 _Comfortable, and sturdy_. Solas’ voice pops into her head, and Tamsin’s mouth goes dry. She presses cold hands to her burning cheeks, relieved beyond words that neither Harrit nor Dagna are there to see her.

It takes several minutes of thinking stubbornly about bow schematics before her blush fades completely.

 “ _Fenedhis,_ ” she swears softly to herself as she exits the undercroft. _Focus!_

She glances over the wall as she exits the keep; the sun is over the horizon, but the air still tastes of dawn. Bull won’t be fully awake, so she heads up the staircase to the ramparts, opting to take the long way around.

“Inquisitor.” Cullen greets her with a nod, halting a conversation with one of his lieutenants.

“Commander.” Tamsin pauses. “How are things?”

“Well.” Cullen waves off the soldier, who salutes them both before retreating, and steps closer to her. Tamsin has to tilt her head back to meet his eyes; he is at least a head taller. “We’ve had no trouble with the mages; they’re integrating well into our ranks. I’ve heard rumors of excitement over the plans for the central garden as well. I believe some are hoping you’ll turn it into an herb garden, and others are hoping for a chantry garden.

“There is that statue of Andraste in that one room,” Tamsin muses. “Do you have a preference, Commander?”

“Me?” Cullen looks startled that she’d ask. “I… no, not particularly. A chantry garden would bring peace to the more devout, but a place to grow herbs in the keep would be invaluable, and the statue of Andraste will serve as a place of worship regardless of the state of the garden.” He pauses for a moment, thinking. Tamsin watches him patiently. Cullen is a no-nonsense, straight-forward man—he is an excellent commander because of it, though his grasp on the finer points of diplomacy is (self-admittedly) weak—but when it comes to gauging the state of an army, he is incredibly astute.

After a few moments, he returns his attention to her. “I don’t believe there’s a leaning one way or the other among my soldiers. If you do what you think is best, I expect it will please them regardless.”

“Thank you for your thoughtful advice, Commander.” Tamsin smiles genuinely at him, and is amused to see that his eyes widen in surprise before he goes a bit pink.

“Always, Inquisitor,” he promises.

“I’ll let you return to your duties. Forgive the interruption.” She glances over his shoulder at his lieutenant, who is patiently waiting. Cullen nods and salutes, then turns back to his subordinate as Tamsin continues on.

Perhaps it’s the fact that the day is clear and bright, or perhaps it’s the effect of starting her day with some decidedly excellent kisses, but she is in an exceptionally good mood. Tamsin nearly bounces on the balls of her feet as she walks, and greets every soldier that salutes her. When she slips into the top floor of the tavern—which is dead quiet, unsurprisingly—Cole looks up from his corner and says, “You are sunshine and breath today.”

“Thank you, Cole.” She’s fairly certain that’s a compliment.

“You want to tell me something.”

“Yes. We are going to the Fallow Mire in two days, and Solas suggested that you would be a good addition to the party. I agree with him. We’ll leave at daybreak; Dennet will have a horse ready for you. Please pack what you’ll need.” She shoots him a cheery smile and turns to go.

“Fallow Mire…” Cole says quietly. “You are afraid of it.”

Tamsin stops short.

“It screams with souls, and you can hear the cries of a hundred thousand shadows at the edge.”

She turns back. Cole’s head is lowered, his eyes invisible behind the rim of his enormous hat.

“You carry moonlight and emeralds in you, but it’s not always enough. You’re singing your own verse, now, and the words are yours. Da da-da, da-da, da-da…” he hums a lilting tune under his breath.

Tamsin frowns and takes a few steps towards him. Cole lifts his head, fixing her with his ghostly stare. “It’s a happy song, you know,” he confides, leaning forward. “It won’t always be, but it is now, and some of your shadows are singing it too. Singing it for you. It’s not their song, but they want it to ring true, because shadows won’t always be shadows, and when the light changes, so do they.”

“I don’t understand, Cole,” she says quietly.

“That’s alright.” Cole’s gaze refocuses on her, and it looks softer now. “They don’t either. Most of them don’t know, can’t see what echoes the time sends out. It’s all a folded fan, song on song on song on song. But yours is happy.”

“I am happy,” Tamsin affirms. It’s the only bit she can respond to. Cole tilts his head at her.

“Warmth and musk,” he says suddenly, in a thoughtful voice. “He smells like ink and lightning, and you think he might taste like the sea. He wants to be honest with you, you know. He’s trying very hard. Honest in action. Honest with his body.” He tilts his head the other way, like a bird. “Sturdy beds?”

“Please stop,” Tamsin says, holding up a hand. She’s gone red again.

Cole’s face falls. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No, no.” Tamsin takes a few steps forward and touches his forearm comfortingly. He’s better with physical touch now; the reassurance clears some of the distress from his face. “There are just some things that are… more private than others.”

“Like sex.”

“Like… yes.” Tamsin sighs. “Like sex.”

“And it’s distracting,” he realizes. “You’re waiting. You want it, though it makes you anxious because it’s been a very long. But you’re not really _afraid_ of that at _all_.”

Tamsin laughs despite herself. “No, I’m not.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s _wrong_ , really,” she tells him. “It creates a lot of feelings. I don’t want to have to rush off and be official when I’m full of things I haven’t had time to really _feel_.”

“Oh.” Cole nods. “I understand. Feelings take time to understand.”

“Yes. Not all of us are as good at putting words to them as you are.”

“Many think I’m not very good at words at all.” Cole frowns up at her. Tamsin smiles fondly.

“You have your way with them. What does Varric think?”

“He… he thinks that I have puzzle pieces. He likes to put them together.”

“Well there you go. Varric is the best with words out of all of us, I think. If he’s using your words, then you’re just fine.”

“Josephine is good at words. She’s very good at words. She makes them mean things they don’t mean to say things without saying them.”

“That’s a different kind of good,” Tamsin says thoughtfully. “Josephine is good at talking to people who talk the same way she does. Varric is good at talking to you because you talk in ways he likes.”

“It’s like music.”

“Sort of, yes.” Tamsin doesn’t completely understand that comparison, but it seems to work.

“Bull is up,” Cole informs her. “He’s in the yard. He’s awake enough  to talk to, now. It sometimes takes a while. It didn’t, this morning.”

Tamsin laughs. “Thank you, Cole. I’ll go talk to him. I’ll talk to you later.”

“How do you know?” Cole wonders, as he often does. Tamsin takes the stairs down two at a time, and hears him murmur something about ‘sunshine’ again, before she slips into the yard.

Bull is _barely_ awake, judging by the fact that the practice dummy he’s chopping at is still standing. Krem and Dalish lean against the wall behind him, both yawning into mugs of steaming tea.

“Boss,” Krem calls over the rim of his mug. Bull looks at  him, then follows his gesture to Tamsin.

“’Mornin’, Boss,” he greets. “You look chipper.” He pauses, giving her a careful once-over, and then flashes her a grin. “Good morning?”

Tamsin is sorely tempted to throw her mug at his head. He must see it in her eyes, because he drops his practice axe and raises his hands in playful submission. “Forget I said anything. What’s up?” 

“Fallow Mire,” she replies. “Two days. You, me, Cole, Solas. _Don’t,_ ” she adds, at the look on his face. He’s grinning horn to horn, but he doesn’t say anything.

“Sounds good,” he says cheerfully. “Could use some corpses to decorate my new maul.”

“Thank you,” Krem calls to her. “He’s going to get us kicked out of the tavern if he doesn’t burn off some energy.”

“We’re half their business!” Bull protests.

“He’s going to get us kicked out of the tavern,” Krem repeats. Beside him, Dalish nods emphatically.

Tamsin smiles. “The Fallow Mire will help with that. Daybreak in two days. Talk to Dennet; he has a mount for you, I think.”

“Oh good.” Bull winces. “I don’t like those little horses.”

“He’s worried he’s going to break them,” Dalish supplies. Bull frowns, but doesn’t contradict her.

Tamsin laughs and waves them back to their practice, heading into the keep. She has work to do, as always; there are books in the library on the veilfire runes they found  in the Fallow Mire, and she wants to read up before they go back.

The library is cool and quiet, but it doesn’t match her mood. She finds the books she wants, and then carries them up to the rotunda.

Solas gives her a soft smile when she enters, and seems pleased when she settles herself on the settee and opens the first volume. Above them, Dorian lets out a wolf whistle. The rotunda is decidedly _not_ empty by now, and more than a few people laugh.

“Dorian,” Solas says in a conversational tone,” I have an open bucket of paint near me. I t would be a shame if it ended up all over your clothes.”

“It would end up all over the books as well,” Dorian shoots back, “and you would never permit that.”

Tamsin glances up in time to catch Solas’ grimace. Dorian is right.

“He doesn’t have to toss the whole bucket,” she points out, looking back at her book. “What color is that, Solas? Orange?”

“Indeed, _vhenan_.”

Tamsin’s cheeks go pink at the endearment. “It seems to me a few splashes would be enough to accent your clothes beautifully, Dorian,” she muses, flipping the page in feigned disinterest. She has no idea what she just read. “A few strokes of a brush, if you will. The books would be unharmed.”

There is silence above them, and then, “I suddenly find myself very interested in this ancient volume that was _very_ hard to procure and  is simply too precious to endanger.”

“How very altruistic of you,” Tamsin says thoughtfully. Dorian huffs, and is silent.

A moment later, a shadow falls over Tamsin, and she looks up to see Solas leaning over her, one hand braced against the wall above her head.

“You are magnificent,” he murmurs to her, bends down, and kisses her once, twice, three times. Tamsin is definitely pink now. Solas smiles at her and curls his free hand around the back of her neck, pulling her in for a fourth kiss that deepens rapidly.

“My silence is contingent on a lack of kissing in the foyer!” Dorian shouts. Muffled giggles scatter through the rotunda, and Tamsin can swear she hears Leliana among them. Solas breaks the kiss, closing his eyes in exasperation.

“Solitude is an impossibility,” he sighs to her.

“In this tower?” she replies. “Absolutely.”

Solas shakes his head once and stands up. He looks utterly unruffled, which Tamsin finds patently unfair. _I’ll have to remedy that at some point,_ she thinks, grinning to herself, and returns to her book.

It’s surprisingly easy to fall back into old patterns, despite the fact that Solas is _right there_. And she could kiss him, if she wanted. She could. Tamsin forces herself to focus on the tomes in front of her, making notes on a piece of spare parchment with one of Solas’s charcoal sticks. He’s wrapped it in a handkerchief for her, to keep her fingers clean, which is both surprising—Solas carries a handkerchief?—and very sweet.

She asks him about it, when he wanders past her divan.

“It’s not mine,” he informs her, pausing. There is a paintbrush tucked incongruously behind one ear, and his hands are covered in paint. She shoves thoughts about getting paint in interesting places into the back of her mind. “It’s Commander Cullen’s.”

“You have a handkerchief from Cullen?” she repeats, nonplussed. Solas nods, lip curling faintly at the insinuation.

“I believe he must carry at least half a dozen on him, and own many more. I sneezed a week ago in front of him, and  he offered it to me. I cleaned it and went to return it, but he refused.”

Tamsin inspects the bundle of white cloth wrapped around the charcoal stick; it’s unembellished, which is unexpected, and makes them easier to give away.

“He’s trying to civilize us through handkerchiefs,” she realizes, looking up at Solas. He blinks down at her, and then cracks a smile.

“That’s an interesting theory. I would expect it of Ambassador Montiliyet, not our Commander, however.”

“Hers are probably bordered in gold and far too precious to share. Besides, I expect she’s involved anyway,” Tamsin mutters, looking back to the handkerchief again. Indeed, the linen is barely worn; it’s covered in paint stains, but  it can’t have been washed more than  twice before it found its way to Solas.

“And now you’re using it as a paint rag,” she realizes, looking up at Solas. He nods.

“Even if I found such things necessary, they’re a nuisance to carry.” He gestures to his attire. “I am short on pockets.”

Tamsin laughs and wraps the handkerchief  more securely around the charcoal stick. “Perhaps I’ll give him a dozen handkerchiefs for his nameday,” she says, finding her place in the book. “He’s probably drowning in them as it is. He won’t know whether to thank me or cry.”

Solas chuckles softly, and moves to continue working on his mural.

Tamsin watches Solas throughout the day, admiring him when he’s not looking. She’s always thought he was attractive—since well before her insufferable crush began—but with this new change, with the realization that she can now kiss and touch him the way she’s wanted to for a long, _long_ while, watching him becomes less a matter of admiring, and more a matter of planning. She wonders at his back as he reaches up, imagining the muscles that might be under that plain sweater. Imagining tracing them with her fingertips, and then maybe her tongue. His sweater shifts as he bends for a tube of pigment, and she takes the chance to admire his excellent posterior. She’s noticed it before, of course, but now she can wonder, without feeling guilty, what it be like to grab it. Firm, she’s sure. Would he jump if she squeezed  it? Probably get her back, too, if she knows him at all. What would it feel like under her hands as it flexes, as he leans over her, driving his hips—

“You’re drooling.”

“ _Fenedhis_!” Tamsin jumps about six inches off the cushion, then scrambles to catch her books and notes before they drop. Dorian smoothly catches one before it hits the ground and opens it to the page she’d marked.

“Veilfire ruins, hmm?” he asks, flipping the page. “I was prepared to chastise you for your terrible study material, but this is actually a very reputable tome. Nice choice.”

“Did you have to scare me shitless?” Tamsin demands, glaring up at him. Her heart is pounding.

“No.”  Dorian grins down at her. “But it was delightful. And I wasn’t wrong. You were drooling.”

Tamsin swipes self-consciously at her chin. It’s dry, but the movement makes Dorian roar with laughter. Solas looks  up, puzzlement on his face that sharpens to amusement when he sees how utterly flustered Tamsin is. _Open creators-forsaken book_ , she thinks, burying her face in her hands. Dorian pats her shoulder consolingly.

“I’m delighted for you,” he says sotto voce, in a surprising moment of honesty. Tamsin turns her face just enough to look at him with one eye. He looks sincere. “You’re just such terrible fun to tease.” He glances at Solas, who has returned to his mural. “Admiring?” He asks, voice blessedly low. “Haughty bald mystics are hardly my type, but I can see the aesthetic appeal, I think. He’s a good mage, I’ll give you that.” A moment, and then Dorian looks down at her, his eyes twinkling with a thought that Tamsin _knows_ she is going to hate him for. “He’s got quite the mastery over small magics, too. I wonder what he can do with those long fingers of his.”

She was right.

Tamsin doesn’t bother berating Dorian. She simply shoves her face back into her hands and tries very, very hard _not_ to wonder what Solas can do with his hands. And small magics. Electricity, or—oh, or ice…

 _Veilfire runes_! Tamsin thinks furiously. _Fallow Mire. Bow schematics. Staff schematics. Sword schematics_. Oh, _that’s_ not helping.

Dorian chuckles with infuriating self-satisfaction and pats her shoulder again. “Try not to combust,” he advises, and saunters away.

Tamsin leaves her face in her hands. If someone else makes her turn bright red again today, she might not ever go back to normal.

When she lifts her head, Solas has left the rotunda. _Gone to fetch more paints_ , she thinks. _Or food_. On cue, her stomach rumbles. Tamsin takes the chance to flee as gracefully as possible, gathering up her books and retreating to her tower. She really _does_ need to concentrate, and he is a terrible distraction.

It takes about twenty minutes of leaning over her balcony with her face in the cold wind, but Tamsin eventually returns to her books and notes with a clear head. She backtracks a few pages, to make sure she didn’t miss anything, and finds a note about the connection between veilfire and spirits that she hadn’t seen. That sends her digging in another book for details, and then trotting down to the library to find a tome she _knows_ she saw that said something about still water and the Veil. She finds it, and another three directions to look in, and ends up grabbing six enormous dusty volumes that send her into a sneezing fit about halfway across the main hall. She staggers, struggling not to drop her books or sneeze directly on them, pressing her face into her shoulder as she tries to keep at least a stone’s worth of ancient valuable knowledge from flying across the floor.

“Whoa, easy there, Kitten.” Weight lifts from Tamsin’s arms. She panics, casting around for the books she’s dropped, before realizing that Varric is in front of her, holding her stack. His head is tilted, reading the sideways title on the top volume. “Reading on veilfire?” He glances up at her. Tamsin starts to nod, and promptly descends into another sneezing fit. “Oh geeze. Here.” Tamsin opens her eyes to see a familiar-looking white cloth being shoved towards her face. She takes it, amused.

“Is this Culle- _ah-ahchoo!”_

“Yeah, it’s Curly’s. He’s dropping them like a lady in distress,” Varric chuckles, and waves her off when she tries to return it. “Keep it, I’m sure he’ll throw another at me next time I cough. Iron Lady gave him a gift of them and he doesn’t know what to do with them, so he’s pawning them off on everyone.”

“Vivienne gave them to him?” Tamsin asks, after a fierce round of sniffing doesn’t set off any more sneezes. “I thought it was Josephine.”

“You’d think, wouldn’t you?” Varric angles the stack of books away from her and sweeps a layer of dust off the top one. “No, Ruffles would teach him how to use them properly. Vivenne’s plotting something, Maker knows what. Knowing her, she’s going to spread them across the keep and then swaddle us all up and conquer the world with her handkerchief-powered armies.”

Tamsin snorts with laughter. “ _That’s_ plausible.”

Varric shrugs. “Would you put it past her?”

“No, not really,” Tamsin admits, and takes the books back when he offers them. “Thanks for the help.”

“No problem. Day full of research, then?”

“Yeah. We’re heading to the Fallow Mire in two days; I want to make sure I don’t miss anything before we go.”

“Don’t forget to eat, Kitten. You get more focused than I do, when someone plants a bunch of books in front of you.”

“I hope so,” Tamsin mutters, remembering her utterly failed attempts at focus that morning, and shoots Varric a smile before retreating to her tower.

She doesn’t forget to eat. Not really. Tamsin has a couple of bread  rolls and some dried fruit stashed in one of her desk drawers, and she gnaws her way through them as she combs through her books, pen and parchment in hand. Ancient Orlesian script is a pain to read, and figuring out how to hear what’s in between the lines of passages written by Circle mages takes several repetitions.

Her notes are covered in scratched-out phrases and rewritten sentences within a couple hours. She thanks the Creators that her hours spent hiding, for lack of a better word, among the books in the Chantry at Haven led to a less-than-abysmal ability to take coherent notes. Scholarship was never high on the priority list in her clan, but she learned to read, at least, and has a knack for languages that means she’s not entirely useless when it comes to searching for knowledge on her own—even if she does have an embarrassing habit of sporadically reading aloud when she’s concentrating.

At some point, a servant comes up to shovel out her hearth and replace her water basin. Tamsin barely notices; she thinks the servant asks her a question, but she doesn’t respond, too focused on reconciling contradictions between a Tevene and Orlesian account of undead animation. She’s murmuring things like “spirits of death “ and “rending of the Veil” under her breath, and the servant doesn’t stay long. When she remembers to look up half an hour later, her balcony doors are closed, the room is considerably less frigid, and there’s a tray of food sitting on the edge of her desk.

“Remind me to ask Josie to give them all a raise,” she says to no one in particular, plucking a meat roll from the plate, and dives back into her books.


	6. Frustration Stoked

The tomes are helpful, but by the time the sun starts to set, she has more questions than answers. She doesn’t really want to ask—Tamsin is proud of the things she can figure out on her own—but she needs help with some of these details. When a servant returns to take her tray, Tamsin asks him to ask Solas to come see her.

“Of course, Inquisitor,” the man says in a thick Fereldan accent, and then hesitates. “Erm…”

“Hmm?” Tamsin looks up from her book for the first time, blinking at him.

“You have, erm… ink, on your cheek, milady.”

“Not a lady,” Tamsin says out of habit, swiping the back of her hand across her cheek. It comes away streaked with black. “Oh. Thank you…” she hesitates, and realizes that she doesn’t know the man’s name. “I’m so sorry, uh…”

“Neil,” he supplies. “Don’t worry, Inquisitor. You haven’t seen me much before. I’m not offended.”

“Still,” she says with a sigh, rubbing her forehead. “I’m sorry. Thank you for your help, Neil.”

“Of course, Inquisitor.”  He drops into a shallow bow—Tamsin resists the urge to tell him to knock it off—and vanishes down the stairs.

She grabs the handkerchief Varric had given her, licks it, and scrubs inelegantly at her cheek as she stares at her notes. The veil is thinnest in places of recent tragedy, or fierce physical disruption, which explains why spirits sometimes show up after an earthquake or terrible storm, but bogs are hardly places of regular tragedy. Or physical disruption. Still water is about as sedentary as it gets; rifts showing up near waterfalls makes more sense than the deluge of undead in the Fallow Mire. So if it’s not about the Veil, then what is it? And why are there veilfire beacons all over the damn bog?

“Inquisitor?”

“Hmm?” Tamsin looks up. Solas is standing in front of her desk; she didn’t even hear him come in. He looks at her cheek, which Tamsin realizes she is still rubbing with the kerchief. “Oh, I had ink on my face,” she says, dropping the kerchief, and presses a hand to her cheek. Her skin is a little tender. “Is it still there?”

“Let me see.” Solas leans over the desk and takes her chin his hand, turning her face to the side. “Yes, a bit.” He plucks the handkerchief from where she dropped it on the desk, walks over to her water basin, and wets it. “You wanted to see me?”

“Oh, yes!” Tamsin spreads her notes across the desk, looking for the one sheet of parchment with coherent questions on it. “I’ve been looking into the Veilfire and the undead in the bog. I know you know more than I do, but I wanted to learn it on my own, and I’m sure you have better things to do than-“ she stops, startled, when something wet and cool touches her face.

“Don’t move,” Solas instructs her, and begins to gently wipe at the ink that had apparently smeared up her temple. “Otherwise I’ll get this in your eye. What were you saying?”

“Ah, that you probably have better things to do than answer my questions all day.”

“Have I given you a reason to think I mind?”

“No, but…” Tamsin gestures helplessly at her notes. “You do have _other_ things to do, at least, and I figured I should do some of the work on my own.”

“Ah.” Solas folds the handkerchief to a dry corner and gently blots the water from her cheek. “Well, your self-sufficiency is notable.” He straightens and unwrinkles the handkerchief, folding it neatly in half and moving to drape it over the edge of her water basin. Tamsin watches him walk away, unconsciously pulling her bottom lip between her teeth. His touch was so… tender.

Solas turns back to her, his attention on the papers on the desk. “Have you eaten today, vhenan, or just done research?”

“I’ve eaten,” she protests. “I was just.. focused.”

“So I see.” Solas crosses the room again to lean over the desk beside her, studying her notes. “What questions can I answer for you, then?”

“Oh, right.” Tamsin scrabbles for the questions she’s written down and hands it to him. “It just doesn’t make any _sense_. Bogs are stationary. There was a lot of death there at some point, but not recently, and I can’t find any documentation as to why spirits would be so active there. Elgar’nan knows nothing _else_ is.”

“Hmm,” Solas hums in consideration. “What is this word?”

“Which word?” Tamsin cranes over his shoulder. “Oh. It’s, um, foggy? I think. Creators, my handwriting is terrible.”

“I have seen worse.”

“Says the apostate with the script of a god,” Tamsin grouches. Solas quirks an eyebrow at her, then returns his attention to the paper.

“You have excellent handwriting for someone who has only worked with writing more complicated than a bill of lading for about a year.”

“Is that a dig at the Dalish?” she asks, trying for levity.

“No,” Solas replies, and he sounds honest as he flips to the second page of questions. “Simply an observation. I am very impressed by your dedication to perfecting skills you could avoid learning with minimal effort.”

“Thank you?”

“It is intended as a compliment.” Solas puts the pages back in order and sets them on her desk. “Now then. Regarding the disparity between places of physical fluctuation and the bog, it does come down to the Veil, but it’s a result of the history of the location, as well. You know the Veil is thin in places where there has been turmoil, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Locations such as the Fallow Mire are not physically turbulent, but standing water has an unusual proclivity for retaining spiritual energy over a long period of time…”

* * *

 

Solas works with Tamsin through the finer points of her notes for a good two hours. By the time her questions are answered, the sun has set, the fire is crackling in the hearth—thanks to a quick spell from Solas—and she is exhausted.

“Does the veilfire attract or repel spirits?” she asks for the second time, head down as she rewrites  her notes. She probably won’t look at them ever again, but writing things down helps her remember them.

“Depends on their disposition,” Solas replies patiently. “Those who are malicious will be repulsed by it, but will seek to extinguish it, unless they recognize you as a superior force. Benign spirits will seek to be near it, but will not react strongly to it.”

“Which is why once we defeated the greater terror with on that one island, the undead left us alone there.”

“Correct.” Solas shuffles her papers, tidying up the notes she’s already rewritten. “I must say I am impressed.”

“Hmm?” Tamsin dots the end of her sentence and looks up. “What? Why?”

“As I said earlier. Your devotion to perfecting skills some would think extraneous is impressive. I am hardly a tutor to make my opinion so clear, but it is commendable.”

“Solas, you never refrain from sharing your opinion,” Tamsin points out mildly, and Solas smiles at her.

“True,” he admits. “Are you done with that page?”

Tamsin inspects the rewritten page next to its almost-illegible predecessor, and nods. “Here.”

Solas takes it, casts a quick drying spell on the ink, and sets it on top of her pile.

“Remarkably done,” he compliments, and plucks the book Tamsin is reaching for off the desk. “I think this can wait.”

“But I’m not done,” she protests, leaning across the desk. Solas tucks the book behind his back.

“For tonight, you are,” he says firmly. “Your eyes are bloodshot and your hands are clearly tired.”

“They are not,” Tamsin protests, and Solas fixes her with the most unamused look she’s ever seen.

“You are continuously flexing and opening them,” he says. Tamsin immediately hides her hands under the desk. “Are you lying to me, vhenan?”

Tamsin blinks up at him, startled. There is a smirk at the corner of Solas’s mouth. He’s teasing her.

“No,” she lies.

“I believe you just did it again.” Solas sets the book down on the edge of the desk. Tamsin lunges for it, but before she can snatch it up, he grabs her wrist and pulls her out of her chair.

She yelps with surprise, and almost falls over the desk before Solas deftly catches her other arm and brings her around to face him.

“I am disappointed,” he says, shaking his head sorrowfully. “Such an honest face, and yet she attempts to lead me astray with her lies.”

“Me? Lead you astray?” Tamsin asks, incredulous.

“Indeed.” Solas narrows his eyes at her, but she can see the spark of laughter in them. “With your influence and your power, Inquisitor, I am but a humble pawn in your hands.”

Tamsin smashes her lips together, holding in her laugh. “Oh my,” she says, when she can talk without giggling. “How have you caught onto my plot so quickly?”

“I knew it.” Solas closes his eyes. “You intend to abuse my good nature, and I am unable to resist when confronted with your razor wit and consummate beauty. How will I ever persevere?”

Tamsin’s mouth drops open in surprise. When she doesn’t reply for a moment, Solas opens his eyes to look down at her. “Vhenan?”

“You think I’m beautiful?”

Solas blinks, nonplussed. Tamsin is finding it hard to breathe.

“Yes,” he says. “Of course.”

“Of course?” she echoes up at him. Solas’s brows draw together in a mild frown.

“My heart, have I ever given you a reason to believe I felt otherwise?”

“No,” she says. “You’ve just never… said so.”

Solas’s frown darkens, though it seems not to be at her.

“I have been sorely remiss, it seems,” he decides, and drops her wrists to place his hands on her waist and pull her gently in. Tamsin stares up at him, a little dazed. _He thinks I’m beautiful?_

Solas drops his head to press a kiss to her jawline. “You are,” he says against her skin, “One of the most beautiful women I have ever seen.”

“Oh,” Tamsin whispers, as he presses another kiss to her jawline, and then traces a line down her throat with them. He cradles the back of her head in one hand as he kisses the skin above her pulse point.

“I have seen spirits of splendor, love, and desire,” he murmured, punctuating each word with another kiss across her throat, then up her jaw on the other side, “and I have met the memories of queens and warriors entire kingdoms have warred over. I have witnessed the subjects of the world’s greatest love songs as they rose to glory, and have been drawn to none as I am drawn to you.”

“O-oh,” Tamsin echoes. She can’t think straight. His lips are warm and soft on her jawline, his long fingers rubbing against her scalp in a way that makes her go limp and sparkling at the same time.

Solas gives her lips the softest of kisses, and then barely pulls back to speak. “Never,” he whispers, pressing the words into her mouth, “doubt that.”

“I don’t…” Tamsin struggles to think straight. He tastes of warm bread and lightning, and his hand has tightened in her hair in the most deliciously distracting way. “I haven’t…”

As if he knows he’s the reason she can’t think, Solas loosens his grip and pulls away a bit more. She resists the urge to whine at the added distance.

“I have not heard it before,” she says carefully. She has to close her eyes to get through the sentence. Solas is so _close_. Talking is not high on her list of priorities, but he wants to hear the end of her thought. “I don’t think many agree with you, so… thank you.”

“You don’t?” Solas repeats incredulously. Tamsin opens her eyes as she nods. His eyes narrow.

“Is something wrong?” she asks, raising a hand to his face. He looks… _angry_.

“Come with me,” Solas says, pulling gently, but firmly on her arm. Tamsin follows as he marches them both over to the mirror beside her wash basin.

“Look,” he says, turning her to face it, and pulls her back against his chest. He is a solid plane of muscle against her spine, his jawbone necklace pressing between her shoulder blades. Tamsin looks in the mirror in time to see her blush rise, tinting her skin pink from cheeks to chest. Solas pulls her tight against him, and her blush darkens.

She’s never seen that happen before. Tamsin watches herself, rather intrigued. _No wonder people tease me_ , she thinks ruefully. _I look like an apple_.

“Do not look away,” Solas commands softly, and slides his free hand down her side.

Tamsin shivers. His fingers are long and pale against the taupe of her tunic, and she can see the fabric creasing as he gently grips her hip. Solas drops his head to whisper into her ear, “Do you see yourself?”

“Y-yes,” she says, stuttering as he flexes his grip on her hip.

“What do you see?”

“Um.” Tamsin scrutinizes the mirror. What kind of answer does he want? She sees her white hair, the braid holding the left side back, which sorely needs to be redone. She sees her vallaslin, a deep violet ink to compliment her eyes, stark against her red cheeks. The scars on her face and hands are silvery white, except for the long one across her cheek, which is pink with newness. Her tunic is wrinkled, the top two buttons open; the result of hours of leaning over her desk. She has ink stains on her hands, and on her tunic, and she looks tiny against Solas’s larger frame. He’s not a large man—certainly not compared to humans—but he is broad and tall where she is petite and slight.

But he doesn’t want to know all of that.

“I see me,” Tamsin says finally, inadequately.

“You see what you think needs to be fixed, I am sure,” Solas says, tugging on her tunic with his free hand and then running his fingers over her braid. Tamsin nods, embarrassed by his accuracy. “Do you know what I see?”

She shakes her head. Solas holds her gaze in the mirror as he grasps her chin with her free hand. His thumb strokes the line of a scar that runs from the corner of her mouth to under her chin.

“I see strength,” he whispers into her ear. “I see grace and stealth. I see battles won.”

Tamsin swallows.

Solas runs his hand down the side of her neck. She tilts her head, opening to him, and he accepts her invitation, bending down to nip lightly at her skin. She inhales sharply, making him chuckle.

“I see a leader who learns from those she leads,” he murmurs against her skin. His hand slides down the side of her torso, hesitating over the line of her breastband in a deliberate move that makes Tamsin’s head spin. She closes her eyes, breathless. “I see a woman.” His hand finds her hip and he pulls her slowly, deliberately against him. There is a presence at the small of her back, hot and insistent, and when she shifts against it, Solas’ breath catches.

 _He’s hard_ , she realizes. _He’s hard. For me. Because of me._

Her knees almost give out.

She grasps for something to hold, something to anchor  herself to. Her hands find his thighs and she holds tight, unintentionally pressing her nails into his skin as she holds herself up against him. Solas makes a rough noise in the back of his throat, and grabs her chin.

“Look,” he says. Commands.

Tamsin opens her eyes and looks in the mirror.

She is… _a mess_ are the first words to occur to her, but she knows it’s not what Solas sees, and she wants, for some reason, to think as he would. She blinks at her reflection, trying to understand his perspective. His hand on her hip is almost white-knuckled from the force of his grip, though it feels gentle to her. Her tunic is still wrinkled, but it doesn’t look untidy anymore. It looks almost seductive. She is flushed, bright spots high on her cheeks, but not from embarrassment. From… arousal. Her lips are parted, her eyes bright, and Solas is a sentinel behind her, a sentinel with strong arms and eyes that have darkened with something she cannot name. The sight of it makes the heat in her belly coil tight.

As she watches, Solas drops his hand back to her hips. He lowers his head, presses a burning kiss to the side of her neck, and rolls his hips.

It’s the slightest movement, the tiniest increase in pressure, and it sends a rush of electricity up her spine. Tamsin gasps, drops her head back against his chest. “No,” Solas rumbles. “Look.”

It takes a monumental effort, but she lifts her head and looks in the mirror.

His gaze is fierce and hungry as he looks up, lips still against her neck. “Magnificent,” he growls, rolling his hips again, and it takes everything Tamsin has not to collapse against him. She bites her lip, inhales, stays focused on their reflection.

“Good girl,” he praises. She swallows, pleased beyond words by his praise. Solas rolls his hips again, and  the noise she makes is somewhere between a moan and a whimper. She wants those hips _elsewhere_ , because it is deliciously not enough, and she is burning up from the inside.

“Do you see what I see?” Solas’s voice rumbles in her ear. “Tell me.”

“Y-yes,” she pants.

“Good.” Solas releases his grip on her hips, putting distance between them. Tamsin does whine at that, involuntarily.

“Then my work here is done,” he decides, and turns away from her.

Tamsin turns and gapes at  him.

“Wh-what?” she manages, after a moment. Solas glances over his shoulder at her.

“Is something wrong?” he asks in the most infuriatingly mild voice she has _ever_ heard.

“Your work is most definitely not done!” she blurts, and then smacks her hands over her mouth. That thought was not supposed to come out like that.

Solas studies her for a moment. There is silence, save for the crackling of the fire in the hearth, and Tamsin doesn’t know whether to melt through the floor or combust.

“You are a constant surprise,” Solas says thoughtfully, turning to face her. Tamsin very stubbornly does _not_ look down.

“A constant surprise?” she asks instead, through her fingers. Solas nods.

“I thought I knew how you would react,” he says. Tamsin blinks at him. Knew how she would react…? He’s thought about that before? Did he _plan_ that? Has he… He’s thought about her. _Fantasized_ about her?

Her thoughts are foggy as is, and the question doesn’t help.

“I have oversimplified,” Solas decides. Tamsin frowns at him, _utterly_ lost, and then Solas moves. In four strides, he crosses the room, sweeps her up, and pins her against the wall beside the fireplace.

“I stand corrected,” he states, and kisses her fiercely. It is hungry— _starving—_ all teeth and tongue and take. She is pinned between him and the wall, burning up from the inside, his body long and strong against her, every part of him. She whines, tries to wiggle upwards, because he is too tall and she is too short and she  needs some pressure between her legs before she combusts from sheer want. She rolls onto the very tip of her toes, straining against him, canting her hips as he devours her mouth, trying, trying—and then he shifts, or she shifts, or they both do, but the pressure is there, between her legs, and she can’t even try to muffle the moan that rolls between their mouths.

Solas growls, deep in his throat, and moves. He grabs her leg and hitches it around his hips, then curls his hands under her ass and lifts her as easily as he would his staff. Tamsin winds her legs around his hips, holding tight, suddenly very grateful she is as small as she is. _I’m going to climb this man like a tree_ , she thinks suddenly, and is very ready to make good on that idea when Solas pulls back.

“Wh… what are you doing?” she pants, staring at him. Solas says nothing. He gazes at her for a moment, pupils blown and hungry, before heaving an enormous sigh and touching their foreheads together.

The gesture is so unexpectedly tender that it makes Tamsin pause.

“Solas?” she tries, after a moment.

“I am sorry,” he breathes, and presses a kiss to her forehead.

“Wait, for what?” Tamsin leans her head back to stare at him. Her legs are still wrapped around his waist, and they are still pressed together in some deliciously sensitive places, and _she’s_ not upset, why is he…

“If you leave me after that,” she warns, voice cold as ice, “I will figure out a way to do something terrible. I don’t know what yet, but it will probably involve something painful. Or embarrassing. Or both.”

“I am not walking out on you,” Solas promises. “I am sorry because I told myself I would not begin anything. It is unkind for us to be so… wound up directly before a journey.”

“So finish what you started,” Tamsin suggests, grinning as she wiggles her hips. “Then we won’t be wound up.”

Solas huffs out on a laugh and kisses her, infuriatingly gentle. She can feel the spark underneath, and tries to coax it back out with her tongue, but he won’t have it.

“It won’t work,” he says, pulling back and pressing his forehead to hers again. “It is too dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” Tamsin repeats. Solas nods, and pushes gently at her hips. Reluctantly, she drops to stand on her own two feet. It takes a moment for her legs to work again.”

“The Fallow Mire is too turbulent for us to go in distracted by desire, _vhenan_.” He kisses her again, gently, and this time she refrains from trying to escalate, however reluctantly. “We will attract too many spirits.”

“So let’s get it out of our system now,” Tamsin suggests, knowing it’s not really a viable option. Solas shakes his head with another huff.

“No, my heart,” he says, and his voice is dark and low with something that sends goosebumps skittering along her skin. “I will not rush this. When I do, I will do it right. I will devour you until your voice is hoarse from screaming my name, until you smell only of me and think only of me, and that will take more time than we have.”

Tamsin’s legs aren’t working any more. She leans back against the wall, and then slides slowly to the floor. “Oh,” she manages. Solas kneels and meets her gaze, looking incredibly smug. She scowls at him. “Nice job. I thought we were attempting _not_ to draw desire spirits.”

“I can turn my mind to other things, vhenan,” Solas tells her, amused. “You, I am afraid, will need to bring sleeping draughts with you to avoid stepping into the Fade in your dreams.”

“This trip is turning out to be a great deal more trouble than  it’s worth,” Tamsin whines. Solas chuckles.

“Perhaps.”

“But I promised Harding we’d get her that keep,” she sighs, and forces herself back to her feet. “So we have to go.”

“Indeed.” Solas nods. He studies her for a moment. “Thank you for understanding, vhenan. It was unkind of me to start that.”

“I was hardly unwilling,” she points out, and the corners of his lips lift in a smile.

“True.” He kisses her forehead, a gesture so soft and sweet that Tamsin’s annoyance almost disappears. Almost. “I must go, now. Before you overpower my better nature and I change my mind.”

Tamsin laughs, and leans up to catch a kiss on the corner of his lips as he’s pulling away.

“If you must,” she sighs with as much melodrama as she can muster. Solas turns to go and Tamsin, on an impulse, reaches out and smacks his ass.

Solas pauses. Tamsin hides her hands behind her back and mashes her lips together, holding in the giggle that threatens to break out. Slowly, he turns and looks at her over his shoulder.

“What was that?” he asks.

“Just something I’ve wanted to do for a while,” she chirps, stands on her tiptoes, and kisses his cheek. “Now go away.”

Solas shakes his head, and then turns and heads for the stairs. There is a pause in his step, a movement of his hands as he walks away, and Tamsin realizes with glee that he has to adjust himself before he can leave.

He pauses at the top of the stairs to look back at her. “Sweet dreams, _vhenan_.”

Tamsin perks up. “Is that a promise?”

Solas’s only response is a chuckle as he walks down the stairs, and then  the door clicks shut behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I blame the ao3 community for this one; the amount of drool-worthy dominant!Solas on this site is amazing.  
> Don't worry if it's not your thing, though. It won't escalate from that. At least, not in this fic. HEYOOO


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